In this global era of information technology one in every 108 person is living as a refugee. According to UNHCR, there are 70.8 million people who have been forced to displace from their homelands. Becoming a refugee is a very complex and horrific experience in one’s life as it changes the over well-being of a person. Short term and long term social, emotional, psychological and economic effects of displacement not only change the life style of the people but also make them vulnerable to future risks. It is an irony that current humanitarian architecture only deals with the operational aspects of emergency response and does not help refugees to focus their energies for long term solutions of the problems that forced them to displace from their homes. We need to add a transformative perspective into current humanitarian approach by using a system thinking approach. This transformational perspective needs to envision a conflict/problem a positive natural phenomenon and develop willingness among the affected community to respond it in a positive way.
What I believe that international humanitarian architecture when implemented in fragile states becomes least effective due to bureaucracy, complacency, corruption and poor moral code of conduct. This requires a deliberate systematic actors’ oriented approach to improve the overall governance of humanitarian architecture. Pursuant to this realization, I am proposing a refugees centered solutions wherein refugees will be empowered to play two types of roles i.e. a) To act as leaders to improve the overall governance, management and quality of humanitarian services and 2) The change agents engaged with the system to influence legal policy and institutional mechanisms to address the problems that forced people to displace from their homelands. This program has two phases i.e. a) Phase One: Promoting Adaptive Leadership Among Refugees Youth and 2) Phase Two:Provision of youth led humanitarian services. Extended on one years time period, the project aims to transform crisis into opportunity by introducing paradigm shift in conventional humanitarian approach which does not create leadership at local level thus making refugees dependent on external aid which is always short due to rapidly diminishing global aid measures.
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