Outcome Harvesting About 70% of the organizations that receive funding as part of the Dialogue and Dissent program (by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) use, or intend to use, some form of outcome harvesting as a monitoring & evaluation method. What do we learn from the existing good practices? How does it feed into our learning loop? What are the expectations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IOB with regard to the quality of information obtained through outcome harvesting? Can we come up with practical guidelines for the use of outcome harvesting for the mid-term review and the final evaluation of - for example - the Strategic Partnership Programs? This learning event is organized by Partos in cooperation with GPPAC and Wolfgang Richert (OH consultant), and is financed by Partos and the Knowledge Platform. Program 13:00                  Arrival & registration 13:15                  Welcome & Introduction 13:30 - 14:00      Presentation Quality assurance in OH – Introduction to the challenge (Wolfgang Richert) 14:00 – 14:40     Four presentations of cases of OH practices: 5 min. each, 5 min. questions 14:40 – 15:00     Coffee Break 15:00 – 16:30     Working group sessions: challenges and solutions of quality assurance 16:30 – 17:00     Plenary:                            (1) Collection of the most important recommendations                            (2) Consensus on minimum requirements? 17:00 – 18:00     Network drinks Outcome Harvesting workshop Click here to learn more about GPPAC's Outcome Harvesting workshop.

During this event, Saferworld and The Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies (LCPS) will present the findings of their research seeking to better understand how tensions between Syrian refugees and host communities are affected by various developments and initiatives, and the policy and programming implications this has for sustaining peace in Lebanon. This is an invitation-only event, which will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

In 2018, the EU finds itself on the crossroads of migration management. On the one hand, there is an impression that the so-called refugee crisis is over, on the other hand, the dramatic images in the (social) media present a different reality. Although the local and national authorities have emphasized the need for a coordinated, centralized governance on supranational level, many Member States are unwilling to share the burden of asylum protection defined by the European Commission. The EU migration agenda is increasingly externalizing its responses to the growing migration flow and pushing the responsibilities of Member States outside of the Schengen borders. The aim of this conference is two-fold; firstly, to critically reflect on different aspects of the ‘so-called refugee crisis’ in the last three years from an international, multidisciplinary perspective, secondly to share theoretical and empirical knowledge on different issues in migration process. What can we learn from the discrepancies between the policies and realities, on the one hand, and from the positive initiatives and best practices on the other hand? The conference provides a forum to address the following (but not limited to) issues: public and private actors in managing migration flows,  legal frameworks, criminalization of migration, human smuggling and/or human solidarity, the social consequences of refugee flows in the host societies in terms of labour exploitation, media representation, the role of social media to facilitate migration, gender and sexuality in migration trajectories, the tension between human rights and security, geopolitical challenges in the aftermath of EU-Turkey deal, policing. Keynote speakers Demetrios Papademetriou (Migration Policy Institute (MPI), Washington, USA); Evthymios Papataxiarchis (University of the Aegean, Greece); Peter R. Rodrigues (Institute of Immigration Law, Leiden University, Netherlands). We welcome policy-makers, academics (criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, economists, social geographers, anthropologists), NGO representatives, law enforcement officials and other persons interested in migration issues to participate in the conference. Call for abstracts You are invited to send panel proposals and individual paper abstracts before 1st of February 2018 to n.kavur@uu.nl. Individual paper abstracts should not exceed 150 words. Please also mention your affiliation, address, email-address and discipline. Panel proposals include a short panel abstract (about 150 words), several paper abstracts, and names of organizers/chairs, presenters and a possible discussant. Please mention the affiliation, address, email-address and discipline of each participant. Participants will be notified by 1st of March 2018. Registration There is no registration fee. To complete registration, all invited participants are required to confirm their participation by sending an email to wpi-congres@uu.nl before 10th of March, 2018. (Please make sure to mention the title of the conference, “EU at the crossroads of migration: critical reflections on the ‘refuge crisis’ and new migration deals” in your email.) The programme will beavailable in March 2018. Organizers are Prof. dr. Dina Siegel, Dr. Veronika Nagy and Dr. Nilay Kavur (Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, Utrecht University), Prof. dr. Annelies Zoomers and Dr. Ilse van Liempt (Human Geography and Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University). Please see the link of the ongoing project Migratiedeals: https://migratiedeals.sites.uu.nl/ For additional questions, please contact Veronika Nagy (v.nagy@uu.nl) and Nilay Kavur (n.kavur@uu.nl)

Border Sessions is a yearly tech culture festival on a mission to kick-start and fuel challenging ideas, experiments and endeavors with a strong focus on multidisciplinary projects. The festival unites creative and critical minds from around the globe who share the belief that technology should be a powerful instrument for positive change. The festival offers a multifaceted platform bringing together a wide array of participants ranging from the public to the private sector. Together with partner network and community, the festival examines groundbreaking technologies and works towards solutions for a better world. The program is built around five main tracks: Humanity, Society, Cities, Nature and And Beyond. 2018 marks the 7th edition of the festival. As in previous years the festival is held in various venues in the city centre of The Hague consisting of co-creation labs and a conference.  Sign up for the newsletter for the latest updates.

Exploring the nexus between land acquisition, displacement and migration LANDac is now accepting submissions for Annual International Conference 2018! Submissions will be accepted until 11 February 2018. LANDac’s Annual International Conference 2018 will look at land investments through the lens of mobility. What are the implications of land based investments on the movements of people? And how have displacement and population movements contributed to new and contesting land claims? The 2018 conference takes this land-mobilities nexus as a starting point, focusing on the extent to which land acquisitions trigger the inflow or outflow of particular groups of people – and also yield other mobilities (capital, goods, ideas etc.) and land claims. Providing people with secure and equal access to land is fundamental in giving people the ‘right to remain’, but land acquisitions simultaneously contribute to evictions and displacements, and the resettlement of groups. Up to now, the discussion has focused on respecting land rights, informing the local inhabitants in advance, and, in the case of forced displacement, offering fair compensation. Given the variety of mobilities, what are good ways forward in land governance?  To what extent can land governance contribute to inclusive development – preventing eviction and displacement, while supporting vulnerable groups to settle in safe places and build secure and sustainable livelihoods? How can property regimes (and ideas of fixing people to the land) move along with these changes and be made more suitable? How do economic transformations – value chain integration, market liberalization or reregulation – affect the ability of rural people to make a living on their lands? What do we know about the stability of ´foreign´ investor communities – and what are the implications of their land investments for the mobility and immobility of local communities? And what is the role of migrants who themselves invest in land – and who are sometimes powerful actors in land-related negotiations that might disadvantage others? We invite proposals tackling these questions on the relation between land governance and mobility by covering topics including: Large scale investment in land for food security Urbanization and infrastructure development Climate change Conflict induced displacement and competing claims Development induced eviction and displacement Resettlement, migration and mobility Cities and urban expansion Inclusive development and land in the Sustainable Development Goals Right to leave and right to stay Land governance and social justice Land administration and technologies Abstracts on other, related topics will also be considered.   SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words must be submitted, in English, via email to: landac2018@gmail.com. Word format is preferred – in the document, please include only: The title of the submission The name of the presenting author(s) The affiliation and email address of presenting author(s) The abstract text To submit a panel proposal, please send a panel outline (following the abstract guidelines) plus the names of at least 4 panellists and the working titles of their contributions. PhD students are invited to present a poster of their research and LANDac also welcomes other innovative and original ideas. So, if you have other suggestions for materials to present or exhibit at the conference – such as short films, interactive websites, photos, posters – please contact the organisers at the above address. An impartial selection committee will review submissions. Successful applicants will be notified by 11 March 2018. Submissions which do not follow these guidelines will not be considered. The conference will be followed by the Annual LANDac and Utrecht University Summer School Land Governance for Development which will take place in Utrecht from the 2nd to the 13thJuly 2018. Please note, registration for the conference will open in early March. Please check back for more information then!