1. Beyond do no harm: Towards Ethical Research Practice with Refugee women and communities
Presenter: Dr Linda Bartolomei
Forced Migration Research Network
(Photographs by the Centre for Refugee Research, UNSW)

2. Presentation Overview
Refugee community engagement and ethical issues with a particular focus on the inclusion of women and girls
‘Reciprocal research’ as a response
Ways forward for ethical, gender sensitive and community engaged research
Including as part of the implementation of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants

3. The Research Contexts
Qualitative projects with refugee and displaced women and girls and men and boys in camps and urban areas in 15 different countries including in Australia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Zambia. Research partners have included: Refugee women’s community organisations, NGOs, INGOs, UNFPA and UNHCR.

4. Ethical Concerns
We are really fed up with people just coming and stealing our stories, taking our photos and we never get anything back, not even a copy of the report. Nothing ever changes
(Refugee woman, Thailand, 2002)
At times we are too scared to take part even if we want to, because of what will happen after they
have gone.
(Rohingya refugees, Bangladesh 2007)

5. (Personal comment Linda Bartolomei, 2004)
Ethical Concerns
When I go into a horrendous camp situation as a white researcher, the people are so desperate for any form of assistance they would agree to anything just on the off-chance that I might be able to assist. It makes asking for permission to interview them or take photographs a farce. . . What does ‘informed consent’ mean in an isolated refugee camp with security problems and no proper interpreters?
(Personal comment Linda Bartolomei, 2004)

6. ‘Reciprocal Research’: A participatory action research based methodology
The reciprocal nature of the method transforms people from subjects of research to participants in research, moves from “harm minimisation” as an ethical base to reciprocal benefit, and from researcher directed projects and outcomes, to participant and community directed outcomes.
(Developed by Eileen Pittaway and Linda Bartolomei)

7. (Female Somali community worker, New Delhi, 2015)
Involving refugees
It was a lesson learnt because the organisations kept doing pilot projects, which always failed and ended up very badly. Those organisations tried their best but they never came to the conclusion of asking people what they want.
(Female Somali community worker, New Delhi, 2015)

8. Ways Forward - Engaging refugee communities
- Consent as an iterative process
Negotiating reciprocity
Applying a gender, age and diversity lens in research design and data collection
Academic research contributions to implementing the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants

9. Commitments in the New York Declaration for to Refugees and Migrants
To meaningfully include refugees and migrants, in particular women and girls in identifying problems and finding solutions.
To improve data collection disaggregated by sex and age
To promote gender equality and combat sexual and gender-based violence

10. References
Bartolomei, L, Ward, K and Garret, G. 2017, Disruptive rights-based community development in protracted urban refugee contexts: the politics of legal recognition, In L. Shevellar, & P. Westoby (Eds.), Research Companion to Community Development.
Pittaway E ;Bartolomei LA, 2013, 'Doing Ethical Research: Whose problem is it anyway?', in Block K; Riggs E; Haslam N (ed.), Values and Vulnerabilities: The Ethics of Research with Refugees and Asylum Seekers, edn. 1st, Australian Academic Press, Toowong QLD, pp , 
Pittaway, E, Bartolomei, L, & Hugman, R 2010 ‘Stop Stealing our Stories’: The Ethics of Research with Vulnerable Group, Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2 (2), pp