Briefing from ROAPE Volume 11 Number 30
Report on a Refugee Conference

In March 1984 a symposium was held at St. Anne's College, Oxford on Assistance to Refugees: Alternative Approaches. It was unusual and innovative in academic circles, at least in Europe, because the aim was that it should offer a platform for refugees and refugee representatives to articulate how they define their problems and how they see possible solutions. It was thus a test of how far people in the West are yet ready to allow those whose voice is usually ignored to actually speak, and whether those with differing degrees of academic, political weight and the ‘humanitarian’ resources would allow themselves to listen.