Humanitarian emergencies, protection, and displacement projects

Projects / Initiatives

These projects collectively are building knowledge of complex contexts of displacement and violence and the ways humanitarian and child protection efforts seek to assist.

Centring collaborative and feminist methodologies that are sensitive to gender, trauma, and age these ambitious initiatives will help understand what drives change in the Global South, what works to prevent violence against women in Asia and the Pacific, how such change is communicated and shared and the impacts on refugee and migrant lives. Read more about how this interdisciplinary research is informing policy and practice through valued sector partnerships, community engagement and Australian National University’s contribution to the Centre for Excellence on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Humanitarian Emergencies and Global South Responses to Children's Displacement

ARC Future Fellowship, ANU

Children and weapons. Photograph of painting by M.K.Naing, Bina D’Costa personal collection

Elimination of Violence Against Women

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW)

CEVAW logo. Image: Molly Hunt (@mollyhunt4food), a Balanggarra and Yolngu woman from the Kimberley

Visualising Humanitarian Crises

:Transforming Images and Aid Policy.
ARC Linkage Project, University of Queensland.

UQ project announced

UQ project

Latest publications & media

Blog: How the migration system is enabling violence against women in Australia

Rally initiated by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) Melbourne, demanding permanent visas for refugees and asylum seekers. Photo: Matt Hrkac - Flickr

Blog: How the migration system is enabling violence against women in Australia

To mark the International Day for Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, ANU Researchers Zoe Bell, Bina D’Costa and Michelle Godwin supported by the Centre of Excellence for Violence Against Women published a short article at Blogal Studies, on how the migration system is enabling violence against women in Australia, and what change is needed to stop this. Today begins 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which ends with International Human Rights day on the 10 December 2024.

Read the blog article

Video: Where research meets community building - ARWDO, CEVAW & ANU

The team at ANU produced a short film introducing the research approach in the 'Displacement: Contextual and Temporal Vulnerability and VAW' project led by Dr. Zoe Bell.

Key researchers

Bina D’Costa is an activist-scholar of global politics at home in classrooms and conflict zones alike. Bina studies wars and forced migration, children and young people’s protection in emergencies, conflict-related sexual violence and war crimes, human rights advocacy, and indigenous rights. Bina is a Professor at the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University. She is also a UN Special Procedures Mandate Holder in the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

Bina serves as a Chief Investigator on Australian Research Council initiatives and holds an ARC Future Fellowship covering topics related to Displacement, Humanitarian Protection and Violence.

At the height of Europe’s refugee emergency, she moved to the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti to build its Migration and Displacement program (2016-2018). As a UN staff, in collaboration with multiple agencies and communities, she led research-led policy advocacy in the Horn of Africa, East Africa, Jordan, Lebanon, EU responses to European Refugee Emergency, and served in the 2017 UN Rohingya Emergency First Response Mission in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

She has provided inputs and technical advice to witness protection and victim support mechanisms at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh, and various civil society justice initiatives in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

She has published many essays and seven books, including Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia and Children and the Politics of Violence. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award (Peace Studies), University of Notre Dame, United States in 2020 and the Ann Tickner Award from the International Studies Association (ISA) in 2022.

Researcher profile

Associate Investigators

Collaborators in Migration and Trafficking research stream led by Bina D’Costa as part of the ARC Centre of Excellence on Violence Against Women.
See the CEVAW website for other affiliated researchers and partners.