Kigali, Rwanda | Inclusive Prosperity and Wellbeing in the context of Mass Displacement | 12-14 February 2018
The inaugural Frontiers of Development Symposium took place from Monday 12 February - Wednesday 14 February 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda, bringing together approximately 70 researchers and practitioners across a variety of disciplines from the UK and around the globe.
During the symposium, participants discussed the challenges of mass displacement, focussing on what drives mass displacement; the pressures that are created by it; and how we can prevent it, adapt to it, and work towards better inclusion of displaced persons in society.
Symposium Goal
The goal of the two-and-a-half day symposia is to introduce outstanding researchers and innovators (aprox. 5-20 years post-doc, or equivalent experience in industry) to each other, and through this interaction facilitate collaboration in engineering for development, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across disciplinary boundaries and the establishment of contacts among the next generation of engineering leaders.
Symposium Format
The event will be made up of three multidisciplinary and interactive workshop-style sessions that explore the overall theme of Engineers as Healtchare Practitioners. Participants are obliged to attend every session to maximise the opportunity to make new contacts and build collaborative relationships.
Each session will be focused on a sub-topic of the overarching theme, with relevant experts chairing the sessions to lead discussions. The themes are:
- Early Disease Detection and AMR
- Machine Learning for Low Resource Settings
- Smart and Mobile Devices
To ensure there is a balance of formal and informal networking opportunities, social activities are organised. We will be visiting the Traditional Medicine Museum in Ho Chi Minh City and watching a water puppet show.
On the final day of the event, there will be a presentation on how to apply for seed funding.
Event Chairs
- Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga BSc (Hons), PhD, FHEA, FRICS. Professor of Disaster Risk Management and Reduction and Head of Global Disaster Resilience Centre, University of Huddersfield
- Professor Henrietta L. Moore FBA. Director of the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL
Symposium sub-themes
At the core of each symposium is three or four multidisciplinary, workshop-style sessions which focus on different sub-themes. Participants are obliged to attend every session to maximise the opportunity to make new contacts and build collaborative relationships. Whilst a session may not directly relate to an individual's research area, it is expected that participants attend all sessions to learn how their work can link in with the work of researchers from other disciplines, in order to address development challenges.
1. Drivers of Mass Displacement
Session Chair: Danielle Botti, Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, Danish Refugee Council
Speakers:
- Natural Disasters: Displacement, relocation and returnDr Nishara Fernando, University of Colombo
- Fluid status of refugees and IDPs and their return to conflict-affected areasDr Irina Kuznetsova, University of Birmingham
- Can Ethiopia use the CRRF to give a durable solution to the problem of refugees?Tsion Abebe, Institute of Security Studies
2. Shared Spaces and Services
Session Chair: Dr Jayati Das-Munshi, Kings College London/Kings College Hospital
Speakers:
- Healthcare performance and resilience: redesigning the systemDr Nebil Achour, Anglia Ruskin University
- Mental health services and disaster response in low resource settingsDr Stephen Sevalie, Sustainable Health Sierra Leone
- Concerning mass displacement: roots, causes and effects and inclusive integration: Case study of Rwandan refugees in Burundi (1959-1994)Dr Gaspard Gapayari, University of Rwanda
- Access to education and health services among refugees in NairobiEdmund Lang'at, Xavier Project
3. Enhancing Value
Session Co-Chair: Professor Siri Hettige, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Session Co-Chair: Corinne Gray, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Speakers:
- Conflict-sensitive employment: Doing things differently in FCAS settingsRabia Nusrat, International Alert
- Job Creation in complex contexts: Challenges from post-war Sri LankaDr Udan Fernando, Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) Colombo
- Large-scale displacement of civilians during the three decades of civil war in Sri Lanka and the challenges of resettlementDr Ganesh Murugesu, University of Colombo
- Integrating refugees into the Labour Market: Experiences from GermanyEva Degler, OECD Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs
4. Rwandan Refugee Camps Case Study Session
Session Chair: Dr Anh Tran, Coventry University
- Anna Okello, Practical Action Consulting
- Denyse Umubyeyi, Practical Action Consulting
- Jelte Harnmeijer, Scene Community
Participants also had the opportunity to hear from three keynote speakers: H.E Jo Lomas, UK High Commissioner to Rwanda, non-resident Ambassador to Burundi; Jakob Oster from UNHCR Rwanda; and Naome Nayebare from the Gender Monitoring Office, Rwanda.
Frontiers Insights
This session is designed to capture key messages and discussions from the symposium. Participants were split into groups, and asked to analyse key questions/challenges drawn from the themed sessions.
This paper has been compiled by the organisers, and reviewed by the session chairs and the programme Steering Committee. The contents of this report are reflective of the discussions of the cohort that attended the Frontiers of Development Symposium: Inclusivity and Wellbeing in the context of Mass Displacement 11th – 14th February 2018. They are not formal statements or positions of any of the National Academies, nor should they be attributed to any individual participant.