HCI and refugees
Reem Talhouk, Ana María Bustamante Duarte, Konstantin Aal, Anne Weibert, Koula Charitonos, Vasilis Vlachokyriakos · interactions · 2018
Throughout history, conflict and natural disasters have led to the forced displacement of people and communities both within countries and across borders.Due to the current rise in conflicts, refugee issues have headlined political debates and social media as 65.6 million people have been forced away from their homes.The large movement of asylum seekers and refugees across continents has made it a crisis that spans both the so-called developing and developed worlds.In line with the longstanding history of innovation and technology within the humanitarian sector, the high penetration of smartphones among refugees [1] has led to a shift toward the utilization of digital technologies in addressing refugee needs.Within the current political climate, the urgency of the recent refugee situation coupled with the marginalization of already existing refugee communities, such as the Palestinians, requires a new and critical outlook on the role of digital technologies in this space.This drove us as a group of human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers to come together to explore our role and our contribution within this complex and politically charged context.