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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Unrwa: Through The Eyes Of Its Refugee Employees, Randa Farah Dec 2009

Unrwa: Through The Eyes Of Its Refugee Employees, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

The article argues that the absence of Palestinian political leadership and institutions following al-Nakba in 1948, led the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to take on an exaggerated role that mirrored those of a welfare government-in-exile. The Agency created the matrix that organized daily life in refugee camps, a process facilitated by its Palestinian and refugee employees.1 Local staff holds a paradoxical position: (i) as Palestinians who share with their beneficiaries a collective history, and (ii) as UNRWA employees who exercise less power and authority compared to international staff. The latter …


“Knowledge In The Service Of The Cause”:Education And The Sahrawi Struggle For Self-Determination, Randa Farah Dec 2009

“Knowledge In The Service Of The Cause”:Education And The Sahrawi Struggle For Self-Determination, Randa Farah

Randa R Farah Dr.

This article examines the education strategy of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the state-in-exile with partial sovereignty on “borrowed territory” in Algeria. The article, which opens with a historical glance at the conflict, argues that SADR’s education program not only succeeded in fostering self-reliance by developing skilled human resources, but was forward looking, using education as a vehicle to instill “new traditions of citizenship” and a new imagined national community, in preparation for future repatriation. In managing refugee camps as provinces of a state, the boundaries between the “refugee” as status and the “citizen” as a political identity were …