The significance of protracted refugee situations

Abstract

Protracted refugee populations not only constitute over 70% of the world's refugees but are also a principal source of many of the irregular movements of people around the world today. The long-term presence of refugee populations in much of the developing world has come to be seen by many host states in these regions as a source of insecurity.

In response, host governments have enacted policies of containing refugees in isolated and insecure camps, have prevented the arrival of additional refugees and, in extreme cases, have engaged in forcible repatriation.

Not surprisingly, these refugee populations are also increasingly perceived as possible sources of insecurity for Western states. Refugee camps are sometimes breeding grounds for international terrorism and rebel movements. These groups often exploit the presence of refugees to engage in activities that destabilise not only host states but also entire regions.

Acknowledgements

Gil Loescher would like to thank the US Institute for Peace and the Ford Foundation for their support. James Milner would like to thank the Trudeau Foundation for their support. We are also grateful to members of the postgraduate class ‘Forced Migration and International Relations’ at Oxford for their contributions to our undertanding of protracted refugee situations in Africa and Asia. Some material from this Adelphi Paper appeared in an article, ‘The Long Road Home: Protracted Refugee Situations in Africa’, published by the authors in Survival, Summer 2005, vol. 47, no. 2.

Notes

¹UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), The State of the World's Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 49

²Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1995).

³UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘Economic and Social Impact of Massive Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries, as well as Other Countries’, Standing Committee, 29th Meeting, UN Doc. EC/54/SC/CRP5, 18 February 2004, p. 2

⁴Merrill Smith, ‘Warehousing Refugees: A Denial of Rights, a Waste of Humanity’, World Refugee Survey 2004 (Washington: US Committee for Refugees, 2004).

⁵Karen Jacobsen, ‘Can refugees benefit the state? Refugee resources and African statebuilding’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, 2002.

⁶UNHCR, ‘Economic and Social Impact of Massive Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries, as well as Other Countries’, p. 3

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gil Loescher

Gil Loescher is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford and was formerly Senior Fellow for Migration and Forced Displacement at the IISS. He is the author of The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Refugee Movements and International Security, Adelphi Paper 268 (London: Brassey's for the IISS, 1992.) as well as over a dozen authored and edited books.

James Milner

James Milner is a doctoral student at St Antony's College, Oxford and is a specialist on refugee policy, Africa and development. Loescher and Milner have co-authored recent articles in International Affairs and Conflict, Development and Security.