Towards solutions for 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

¹See, for example: William O'Neill, ‘Conflict in West Africa: Dealing with Exclusion and Separation’, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 12, special supplementary issue, 2000; and Bonaventure Rutinwa, ‘Screening in mass influxes: the challenge of exclusion and separation’, Forced Migration Review, no. 13, June 2002.

²UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘The Security, and Civilian and Humanitarian Character of Refugee Camps and Settlements’, Standing Committee, 14th Meeting, UN Doc. EC/49/SC/INF2, 14 January 1999.

³Jeff Crisp, ‘Lessons Learned from the Implementation of the Tanzania Security Package’, Geneva: UNHCR, Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, EPAU/2001/05, May 2001.

⁴Lisa Yu, Separating Ex-Combatants and Refugees in Congo, DRC: Peacekeepers and UNHCR's ‘Ladder of Options’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 60 (Geneva, UNHCR, August 2002).

⁵Mats Berdal, ‘The UN after Iraq’, Survival, vol. 46, no. 3, 2004, pp. 83–102. Berdal cites Kofi Annan's May 2004 speech outlining for the Security Council the multidimensional tasks of today's peacekeeping missions: ‘Peacekeeping today has become increasingly multidimensional. The missions you mandate are implementing peace agreements, helping manage political transition, building institutions, supporting economic reconstruction, organising the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, assisting humanitarian aid programmes, supervising or even organising elections, monitoring human rights, clearing minefields, disarming and demobilising militias, and reintegrating their members into the civilian economy’.

⁶Mats Berdal, ‘The UN after Iraq’.

⁷Karen Jacobsen, ‘Can refugees benefit the state? Refugee resources and African statebuilding’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, 2002.

⁸Information for this section is drawn from CARE Kenya and UNHCR programme documents and interviews with programme staff in Dadaab, Kenya, March 2004.

⁹UNHCR, ‘Protracted Refugee Situations’, UNHCR, Standing Committee, 30th Meeting, 10 June 2004, EC/54/SC/CRP.14.

¹⁰Yéfime Zarjevski, A Future Preserved: International Assistance to Refugees (Oxford: Pergamon Press for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1998) pp. 88–90 and Gil Loescher, The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 89–91.

¹¹Statement by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at Meeting of American Immigration Conference, 28 October 1958, UNHCR Archives HCR/1/7/5/USA/CAN.

¹²UNHCR, State of the World's Refugees, 2000, p. 84.

¹³UNHCR, ‘International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees: Report of the Secretary General [Annex: Declaration and Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA)]’, 1989.

¹⁴The CPA has been criticised for a number of reasons. Shamsul Bari, ‘Refugee Status Determination under the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA): A Personal Assessment’, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 4, no. 4, 1992; W. Courtland Robinson, Terms of Refuge: The Indochinese Exodus and the International Response (London: Zed Books, 1998); Astri Shurke, ‘Burden Sharing during Refugee Emergencies: The Logic of Collective versus National Action’, Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, 1998.

¹⁵UNHCR, ‘International Conference on Central American Refugees: Report to the Secretary General’, 1989, and UNHCR, ‘Comprehensive and regional approaches to refugee problems’, EC/1994/SCP/CRP.3, 3 May 1994.

¹⁶UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘Agenda for Protection’, Fifty-third session, UN Doc. Ac.96/965/Add.1, 2002 June 2002, Preamble, Goal 5.

¹⁷Karen Jacobsen, ‘The Forgotten Solution: Local integration for refugees in developing countries’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 45 (Geneva: UNHCR, July 2001).

¹⁸UNHCR, ‘Agenda for Protection’, Preamble, Goal 5.

¹⁹Alexander Betts, ‘International Cooperation and the Targeting of Development Assistance for Refugee Solutions: Lessons from the 1980s’, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper no. 107 (Geneva: UNHCR, September 2004); Barry N. Stein, ‘ICARA II: Burden Sharing and Durable Solutions’ in John R. Rogge (ed.), Refugees: A Third World Dilemma (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1987).

²⁰UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘The Strategic Use of Resettlement’, Standing Committee, 27th Meeting, UN Doc. EC/53/SC/CRP.10/Add.1, 3 June 2003.

²¹UNHCR, ‘Strengthening and Expanding Resettlement Today: Dilemmas, Challenges and Opportunities’, Global Consultations on International Protection, 4th Meeting, EC/GC/02/7, 25 April 2002.

²²European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and US Committee for Refugees (USCR), Responding to the Asylum and Access Challenge: An Agenda for Comprehensive Engagement in Protracted Refugee Situations, USCR and ECRE, August 2003, pp. 37–42.

²³On the prospects of a European Resettlement programme, see: European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), ‘Towards a European Resettlement Programme’, The Way Forward: Europe's role in the global refugee protection system, London: ECRE, 2005, http://www.ecre.org/positions/wfres.pdf

²⁴B.S. Chimni, From Resettlement to involuntary repatriation: A critical history of durable solutions to refugee problems, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 2, UNHCR, May 1999, and Michael Barutciski, ‘Developments: Involuntary Repatriation when Refugee Protection is no longer Necessary: Moving forward after the 48th Session of the Executive Committee’, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 10, no. 1/2, 1998.

²⁵UNHCR, ‘Briefing Notes: High Commissioner's Forum’, 27 June 2003; Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Opening Statement at the First Meeting of the High Commissioner's Forum’, Geneva, 27 June 2003; UNHCR, ‘Background Document: Initiatives that could benefit from Convention Plus’, High Commissioner's Forum, Forum/2003/03, 18 June 2003.

²⁶Larry Minear and Iain Smillie, The Quality of Money: Donor Behavior in Humanitarian Financing (Somerville, MA: Humanitarianism and War Project, Tufts University, April 2003).

²⁷The Refugee Policy Group in Washington DC produced reports on protracted refuge Settlements in Africa outlining many of the problems confronting long-staying refugees at that time. T. Betts, Robert Chambers and Art Hansen, among others, conducted research on some of these groups in Africa and assessed the international community's policy responses, particularly programs aimed to promote local integration.

²⁸Individual studies conducted for the research are posted on the web-page of UNHCR's Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit: http://www.unhcr.ch/epau. For a summary of the research findings, see Jeff Crisp, ‘No solutions in sight: the problem of protracted refugee situations in Africa’, Paper prepared for a symposium on the multidimensionality of displacement in Africa, held in Kyoto, Japan, November 2002.

²⁹UNHCR Africa Bureau, ‘Discussion Paper on Protracted Refugee Situations in the African Region’, Background paper prepared for the 52nd Session of UNHCR's Executive Committee, October 2001; UNHCR's Africa Bureau, ‘Informal Consultations: New Approaches and Partnerships for Protection and Solutions in Africa’, December 2001; and UNHCR, ‘Chairman's Summary: Informal Consultations on New Approaches and Partnerships for Protection and Solutions in Africa’, December 2001. Papers available on-line at: http://www.unhcr.ch

³⁰Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Opening Statement to the 53rd Session of the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme’, Geneva, 30 September 2002.

³¹UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘Agenda for Protection’, Standing Committee, 24th Meeting, UN Doc. EC/52/SC/CRP.9, 11 June 2002.

³²UNHCR, ‘Briefing Notes: High Commissioner's Forum’, 27 June 2003; Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Opening Statement at the First Meeting of the High Commissioner's Forum’, Geneva, 27 June 2003; UNHCR, ‘Background Document: Initiatives that could benefit from Convention Plus’, High Commissioner's Forum, Forum/2003/03, 18 June 2003.

³³Karen Jacobsen, ‘Can refugees benefit the state? Refugee resources and African statebuilding’, Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 40, no. 4, 2002.

³⁴Oliver Bakewell, ‘Repatriation and Self-Settled Refugees in Zambia: Bringing Solutions to the Wrong Problems’, Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, December 2000.

³⁵Alexander Betts, ‘International cooperation and the targeting of development assistance for refugee solutions: Lessons from the 1980s’, New Issues in Refugee Research, UNHCR Working Paper no. 107, Geneva, September 2004.

³⁶UNHCR, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, ‘Protracted Refugee Situations’, Standing Committee, 30th Meeting, UN Doc. EC/54/SC/CRP.14, 10 June 2004, p. 4.

³⁷UNHCR, High Commissioner's Forum, ‘Making Comprehensive Approaches to Resolving Refugee Problems more Systematic’, UN Doc. FORUM/2004/7, 16 September 2004.

³⁸This section on the Somalia CPA is based upon authors' interviews with staff of UNHCR Africa Bureau, Geneva, September 2004.

³⁹United Nations, A more secure world: Our shared responsibility: Report of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, (New York: United Nations, 2004).

⁴⁰ Oxfam, Foreign Territory: The Internationalisation of EU Asylum Policy, (Oxford: Oxfam, May 2005); Gil Loescher and James Milner, ‘The Missing Link: The Need for Comprehensive Engagement in Regions of Refugee Origin’, International Affairs, vol. 79, no. 3, 2003.

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.