Christa Charbonneau Kuntzelman, PhD 

Sharing Voice, Sharing Power: A “How to” for Creating Meaningful Partnerships beyond Consultation

Accepted, Forced Migration Review

Coauthored with Anila Noor

Forthcoming

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Due to embedded power inequities, the voices of persons with lived experience of displacement—including refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced (IDP) and stateless persons—are often minimized, if not silenced totally across humanitarian, governance, and academic sectors. To overcome these inequalities, we propose a model for meaningful partnership beyond consultation that shifts research and interventions from “doing to” to “doing for” and ultimately to “doing with” displaced populations.

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The U.K. wants to send refugees to Rwanda. That’s become a trend.

Op-ed in the Monkey Cage, Washington Post

Coauthored with Eleanor Paynter and Rachel Beatty Riedl

April 2022

 

As the UK plans to offshore asylum processing for select migrants, we argue this scheme will likely cause harm and not offer protection. We situate the UK's plans against broader global trends in asylum outsourcing, as well as identify how this plan reinforces xenophobic, racist, and gendered stereotypes of refugees. In all, we find that these "anywhere by here" models of asylum processing violate human rights and pose great risks.

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Power and the Margins: The State of Refugee Participation.
Contribution for: The Global Refugee-Led Network’s Recommendations for the 2021 UNHCR High-Level Officials Meeting

Coauthored with Shaza Alrihawi, Anila Noor, John Bolingo Ntahira, and Najeeba Wazefadost.

December 2021

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This co-authored report examines the current state of refugee participation in decision- and policy-making that impacts the lives of displaced persons everywhere. The GRN makes concrete recommendations for the international community to consider during the HLOM, and to prioritize ahead of the 2023 Global Refugee Forum.

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Refugee-Led Organizations as Emergency Providers During A Global Pandemic. 
Contribution for: UNHCR People Forced to Flee

Co-authored with Robert Hakiza

November 2021

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UNHCR and international organizations frequently under-value refugee-led initiatives where the displaced themselves provide critical and life-sustaining material, protection, and rights-based support to their fellow displaced. This article demonstrates the value of these refugee-led efforts and argues for more systematic inclusion of refugees into global policy- and decision-making.

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The Importance of Refugee Inclusion in Research Design
Scholars Strategy Network 
April 2021

In this brief memo, I make a theoretical, practical, and moral argument for scholars to consistently and meaningfully partner with refugees, asylum seekers, and other displaced populations to design the research agenda of scholarship. I argue that this intentional partnership will ensure that research made about refugees is useful for their needs and advocacy efforts. 

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Compassion and pragmatic action: The restoring family links program. 

Refugee Review

May 2015

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Humanitarian responses to international migration—including to forced migration where individuals have no choice but to leave one country for protection in another—are often able to respond only to migrants’ immediate protection and provision needs. Through their efforts to restore communication between internationally separated family members, the global Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement supplements these humanitarian efforts by responding to migrants’ emotional and psychological needs.

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South Sudan: Solutions for moving beyond an “ethnic conflict" 
International Research and Review: Journal of Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars

October 2014

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Refugees throughout the world are forced from their homes because their country’s government is unable or unwilling to provide them legal protection. In this paper, I argue that even though refugees have been displaced because of politics, displaced persons—including refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and diasporic community members—can meaningfully contribute to peace-building in their home countries.