Hello, and welcome to refugees in the 21st century. The refugee phenomenon is one of the most complex, compelling, and arguably misunderstood features of the 21st century. Have you ever wanted to better understand who refugees are, where they come from, and where they go? Do you want to access essential knowledge about the global system for refugee protection and solutions for those who've been forcibly displaced? If so, then this is the program for you. This short course is brought to you by the Refugee Law Initiative, a specialized Research Center at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and produced jointly with University of London Worldwide. Over the next six sessions, this course places you at the center of the open access online learning experience, through engagement with a range of robust and challenging activities, materials, and peer discussions. It will be useful if you want not only a deeper understanding of refugees globally in the 21st century, but also if you wish to build key transferable skills in analysis and evaluation in the context of practical challenges. No prior knowledge or experience in the refugee field is required, only a passion to learn. As such, the course is for everyone. Each session will begin with a short video introduction. Sometimes this will be led by me. I'm Professor David Cantor, the Director of the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London. Sometimes the video sessions will be led by me. I'm Dr. Sarah Singer, Senior Lecturer in Refugee Law at the Refugee Law initiative and Program Director of our online master's program in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies. This course is comprised of six weekly sessions. Each has a distinct thematic focus which introduces you to different components of the refugee phenomenon in today's world, providing you with knowledge of the facts surrounding refugees and forced migration flows, and also the key current debates around such issues as, who is a refugee? How does the international community respond to refugee crises? How do we solve the refugee problem? Through this course, you also learn important skills by engaging with technical concepts and analytical application to factual scenarios. The materials for each session include not only video introductions by us, but also written information on the specific topics that you will cover, readings and other resources for you to review, quizzes and other activities to test your knowledge and discussion forums where you can engage with other students. The materials provided for each weekly session have been carefully selected to introduce you to the key factual contexts, debates, and challenges for each thematic area considered. Each weekly session should take approximately 4-6 hours of self-study to complete. Through studying this course, we hope you will gain a foundational understanding of the true nature and dimensions of the refugee phenomena in the 21st century. After completing the course, we envisage that you should have gained sufficient knowledge to do the following, and we also envisage that you will learn a range of essential skills. At the end of the course, you will be eligible for a certificate of completion from the University of London. In the introduction area, you will see there are range of background materials available for you to read of you. These are not specifically linked to the weekly sessions studied during this course, but provide further context to the global refugee situation today. You're welcome to review these now or at any point during the course. If you came to start the first week of the course now, you may wish to make note of these to come back to at a later stage. Now you've heard who we are and more about the course itself. It would be great to learn a bit more about you. In the discussion forum attached to this session, there is a space for you to introduce yourself to others studying this MOOC. Please include a few lines on yourself, what has motivated you to take this course, and where in the world you are. Without further ado, welcome to this course on refugees in the 21st century. We hope you will find the course and these activities stimulating and enjoyable.
