A Global Human Rights & Development Challenge
The World Bank estimates that over 15 million people are displaced by development projects each year, resulting in substantial, multifaceted risks of impoverishment. Outnumbering political refugees, development-induced displacees have become a concealed, global human rights and development problem. The International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR) is composed of professionals working to assure that people who are forcefully displaced become beneficiaries rather than victims of development.
The Birth of a Network of Displacement & Resettlement Specialists
Scattered throughout the world, the researchers and practitioners in the field of population displacement and resettlement have worked for four decades – crafting policies and mitigation methods, conducting research and developing theoretical models to mitigate the damages to these victims. They work for universities, development agencies, governments, non-governmental organizations. They include social scientists, economists, engineers, planners, politicians and human rights activists. Rarely have they met.
The first international meeting was co-sponsored by the Refugee Studies Center and the World Bank at Oxford in 1995. In 2000, at the invitation of the Tenth World Congress of Rural Sociology, Michael Cernea led five full days of sessions on population resettlement in Rio de Janeiro. At this congress, an ad hoc meeting organized by Ted Downing (University of Arizona) and Shi Guoquing (Hohai University, China), 60 resettlement specialists from over 20 countries formed the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR). The International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR) provides a virtual, global communications network of scholars, practitioners, and policy makers attempting to prevent development-induced impoverishment.
INDR Leadership
Ted Downing is the INDR President.
Carmen Garcia-Downing is the INDR Treasurer and INDR Secretary.
The INDR Website
This website is being initially developed through a generous contribution from Professor Downing at The University of Arizona.
Future sections of this website will provide one-stop access to research information on policies, risk assessment, mitigation methods, theoretical development, and the evaluation of development-induced resettlement.