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Refugees from Palestine are one of the oldest refugee populations in the world. And UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which anchors Palestinian refugees’ claims for their right of return to Palestine, is now 63 years old. Yet, in Jordan and Lebanon, the refugees’ main host countries, the Palestinian presence grew in importance in domestic politics through the 2000s. In Lebanon there were the political debates surrounding the granting of some civil rights to Palestinian refugees, which culminated mid-2010. In Jordan, controversies over political naturalisation stir up violent political debates. This essay explores the reasons behind the fact that, in Jordan and Lebanon, granting civil rights to refugees raises a lot of concern. It also examines how the civil rights issue cannot be separated from that of the protection of the Palestinian “cause”, the right of return. More generally, the report investigates the various perceived challenges and the outreach of Palestinian refugees’ settlement (tawtin) in each of the two countries, before and after the late 1980s-early 1990s. Return and resettlement were taken as the two extremes of a similar demographic policy, and therefore, proved to be powerful political tools for regimes and political actors, at the local, regional and international levels. The theoretical framework of political demography and the “political economy” of Palestinian refugee trends and policies in Jordan and Lebanon also allowed for the Palestinian issue to be resituated in the history and the socio-political context of each country; thus revealing their specific challenges. The essay shows that the granting of civil rights to Palestinians is hampered by its politically-destabilising significance in host countries, where civil rights are constructed as citizenship-bound privileges. Therefore, debates on Palestinian refugees flag up deepening rifts within Jordanian and Lebanese citizenries, and diverging views on political “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991). In Jordan, such a rift has been deepened by the recent emergence of nationalist movements and by the tensions which emerged in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Representations of national populations as closed, de jure and ethnic-based increasingly oppose views of nationhood as open, de facto and assimilationist.

With a particular focus on the health sector, this report documents responses to xenophobia in South Africa (SA) from 2000-2022. The overall aim of the research is to determine what has been effective in challenging xenophobia and how to foster solidarity to inform strategic and thoughtful future action, while identifying different forms and modes of responses to xenophobia, including xenophobic violence during this period. Over 80% of the population in SA rely on state-funded access to health. While almost everyone faces challenges in accessing treatment in the country’s failing public healthcare system, specific categories of the population – including asylum seekers, refugees and migrants without documents – face heightened risks, intersectional violence and discrimination when doing so. With rising inequality, unemployment and a public health system crippled by underfunding, corruption and systemic weaknesses, discrimination and violence against foreign nationals and others perceived as “outsiders” such as South Africans from other provinces or naturalised citizens is increasing. The Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the risks and vulnerabilities for many of the country’s most marginalised populations. Drawing from an audit of key civil society actions and strategies that have resisted (health) xenophobia in SA over the past two decades, the report explores the following main questions: what kinds of responses have emerged to tackle multiple forms of health xenophobia? What initiatives, strategies and actions were taken in the past and are taken now – whether organised or informal, by coalitions, organisations, groups or individuals – and how can an understanding of these responses help to mobilise more successfully in the future? The key findings show that there are persistent civil society responses that aim to address the immediate needs of foreign nationals while simultaneously fighting for more awareness, longterm systemic change and recognition of the core structural issues that have led to the crisis within the public healthcare system. To do this, civil society has utilised a variety of advocacy tools: engaging with Parliamentary mechanisms, community mobilisation, protest action, statements, public education, lodging complaints with statutory bodies, embarking on litigation and engaging community networks to mobilise on a local clinic level. The findings of this research also show that within an increasingly challenging context, diverse collaborations and partnerships can be particularly valuable. They draw on the experiences of social justice organisations and their connections with groups and individuals embedded in communities through their histories of local level networking and activism. Highlighting the small, less visible responses which, often have more sustainable impact, this report offers a starting point from which to plan and strategise for the future. However, considering continued and increasingly more emboldened and explicit xenophobia, and the failure (or refusal) of the South African government to take consistent and unequivocal action against xenophobia, it is evident that civil society responses have not been sufficient to quell and address this prejudice. While building on the strategies of the past, new strategies, alliances and energy are urgently needed to continue the struggle to ensure the Freedom Charter vision that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it” – including its public healthcare system.