According to one estimate, the global refugee population has more than doubled over the past decade to 26 million. Professor Keith Watenpaugh, director of the Human Rights Studies program at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis, leads an innovative project to help refugee students start or continue their university education 鈥 even as they are displaced and on the move.
In this month鈥檚 episode of The Backdrop, a 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis podcast, Watenpaugh discussed the Article 26 Backpack project, the 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis鈥 Human Rights Studies program and his rethinking of the history of humanitarianism.
鈥淧eople don鈥檛 just need blankets and food, they need to have their rights protected. Their rights to education, their rights to political citizenship, and balancing the provision of assistance with providing this critical rights-based assistance is one of the things that humanitarianism has utterly failed in and continues to fail in today鈥 said Watenpaugh.
鈥淭he Article 26 Backpack is a way for refugees and other displaced people to effectively curate, store, and share across international boundaries or locally their critical academic documentation. This is really important because most refugees don鈥檛 have good access to higher education and we know that higher education is one of the most effective means for people to make the transition to new societies, but also to ready themselves to go home to societies and help rebuild them. One of the most critical problems with refugees is that they鈥檙e often missing important educational documents.鈥
Watenpaugh also mentioned the current success of the backpack. 鈥淲hat we do see is young people using backpack in seeking scholarships; they鈥檙e downloading documents and attaching them to their applications. The other measures of success are how many organizations are reaching out to us to invite us to use it for the people they鈥檙e working with.鈥
The Backdrop podcast is a monthly interview program featuring conversations with 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis scholars and researchers working in the social sciences, humanities, arts and culture. It is available free, on demand at , , , , and . The Backdrop is hosted by public radio veteran Soterios Johnson.
Listen to the podcast episode . Visit the Article 26 Backpack website