This event is part of the AidAccount conference. Please read more about it here.
What do memories of protracted displacement look like through photos where people tell their own stories?
The Holding Aid Accountable: Relational Humanitarianism in Protracted Crisis (AidAccount) project enabled displaced individuals to articulate their encounters with violence, involuntary migration, and aid through visual storytelling.
Researchers from the Centre for Migration Research and Development (CMRD), the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Centre for Lebanese Studies (CLS) worked with 45 Muslim Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), with a range of displacement, resettlement and/or local integration experiences, who were forcibly evicted from Northern Sri Lanka in 1990, currently residing in three locations.
The study of the visually impactful images captured by IDPs themselves, along with their accounts of the violent incident, unraveled the intricacies of long-term displacement, its material, social, cultural and political meanings – and the diverse roles of aid and aid actors therein. The exhibition will include 50 photographs accompanied by short texts describing why these photos were taken by the participants in the study.
Program
16:30 Welcome and introduction by Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka and Dr. Mohideen Mohamed Alikhan.
16:50 Exhibition viewing
17:30 Panel discussion with: Danesh Jayatilaka, Mohideen Mohamed Alikhan, Cathrine Brun and Tamina Sheriffdeen Rauf. The conversation will be moderated by Marta Bivand Erdal.
18:30 End
A light meal will be served.
Speakers at the event:
Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka, Chairman of the Centre for Migration Research and Development, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Dr. Mohideen Mohamed Alikhan, Senior Lecturer, University of Peradeniya.
Cathrine Brun, Professor and Deputy Director of the Center for Lebanese Studies.
Tamina Sheriffdeen Rauf is a Norwegian-Sri Lankan Muslim born and raised in Oslo, Norway to Sri Lankan parents from Jaffna and Colombo. Rauf is the urban development and housing spokesperson for the Labour Party in Oslo City Council. She is a neurobiologist and has also worked with communications and organizational work as well as as lectured on scientific mediation at the University of Oslo. For many years she has been interested in interfaith and interreligous dialogue work whilst also exploring her cross cultural identity
From the left: Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka, Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka, Cathrine Bruun, Tamina Sheriffdeen and Marta Bivand Erdal. Photo: PRIO / Miglė Gerčaitė
