The Present, Past, and Future of Refugee Protection and Solutions: Camps, Comprehensive Plans, and Cyber-Communities

In his remarks at the annual Bederman lecture given at Emory Law School, Professor Aleinikoff offers comments on better ways of protecting and assisting the millions of human beings who have been forced from their homes in recent years. Professor Aleinikoff relays three sets of stories and uses them to describe the kinds of responses available to governments and the international community. He then considers how technology and civil society are changing the flight, travel, and lives of refugees. In many refugee camps and hosting states, technology is changing the delivery of assistance.

Professor Aleinikoff suggests that through new technology and new media, refugees are beginning to foster new forms of community. Deterritorialized cyber-communities are political and cultural spaces, ones that offer strength and support to others in similar situations around the world, maintaining dreams of home and also fostering visions of the future.