Search Results

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. Two key questions were examined in this study. The first question dealt with the impact of safe third country practices on interstate relations. Yet, it is the second question, that is, the impact of safe third country practices on refugee's rights, which raises the greatest concerns, for these practices lead at the very least to States evading their fundamental obligations under international refugee law. It is argued that international supervision of States' obligations under international refugee law needs to be given central attention.

The primary international organization involved with refugees is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which was established in 1950 to protect and assist refugees and supervise the implementation of the UN refugee treaty regime. In terms of the broader international system, without significant institutional change, increased financial support and renewed commitment on the part of Member States, the UN will not be capable of executing the critical peacekeeping and peace‐building tasks assigned to it in the coming years.

To promote greater coherence in the making and implementing of forced migration policy, a new intellectual capacity is needed. The proposal made by the author is for the establishment of Strategic Humanitarian Action and Research (SHARE), a humanitarian action think tank. SHARE would be both a planning resource and an archive of lessons learned, which ultimately could become an intergovernmental mechanism. It would craft responses to fill the gaps that regularly emerge in post‐crisis situations, particularly in post‐crisis situations when emergency relief is ending, but before the development of a fully functioning state.

For the past half century the UNHCR has been central to the international debates about human rights, conflict resolution, sovereignty, intervention and preventative action, and the role of international organizations in world politics. A central theme is change and continuity in the international political and security systems, in the refugee regime, and in the UNHCR. Contemporary refugee crises are placing the UNHCR under growing pressure regarding both its functions and identity. From focusing almost exclusively on protection and humanitarian relief for refugees in host countries, the UNHCR has progressively taken on additional responsibilities that involve it in a myriad of activities for refugees and non‐refugees alike.

Beginning with the establishment by the League of Nations of the first High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, the scope and functions of assistance programmes for refugees gradually expanded, as efforts were made to regularize the status and control of stateless and denationalized people. During and after World War II, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) further expanded the international organizational framework for refugees. Since 1951, an international refugee regime—composed of UNHCR and a network of other international agencies, national governments, and voluntary or non‐governmental organizations—has developed a response strategy that permits some refugees to remain in their countries of first asylum, enables some to resettle in third countries and arranges for still others to be repatriated to their countries of origin.

UNHCR was created with a mandate for refugee protection and to provide solutions to refugee problems, but with practically no funds with which to carry out these functions. Despite the inauspicious beginnings of the UNHCR and the opposition of the US and the Soviet Union in the early Cold War period, the first High Commissioner, Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart, convinced the major powers that their interests in political stability in Europe converged with those of the UNHCR. By gradually enlarging the scope of his office, by obtaining the capacity for independent fund raising through the UN Refugee Emergency Fund and by assuming material assistance responsibilities, the High Commissioner paved the way for the UNHCR to become the centrepiece of the emerging international refugee regime.

While frequently neglected as an important aspect of globalization, refugees matter in a variety of ways to states, host communities, and individuals. The end of the cold war changed responses to forced migration emergencies in fundamental ways. The ideological value of refugees was reduced, and, at the same time, impediments to international intervention were lifted.

But there is no single answer, no single tool or even formula or combination of tools to deal with particular displacement situations. Sustainable policy requires the institutionalization of preventive approaches and effective forms of international cooperation.

The refugee policy toolbox includes such remedies as territorial asylum, local integration in countries of asylum, and resettlement abroad, as well as new variations on these themes. Efforts at internal protection before individuals have fled their home countries, have had mixed results. While the quality of asylum for refugees is hardly uniform given the wide discretion permitted to states, under international law, providing access to the territory of an asylum state will continue to be the primary form of protection. The experience in Germany is reflective of a recent trend by states, particularly in Europe, away from asylum as a refugee protection response.

Policy planning relating to forced migration is embryonic. The absence of resources, staff, and time devoted to developing strategies to mitigate crises is a glaring deficit in humanitarian action. At the international and national levels, new strategic planning capacities outside of the UN system are necessary.

The chapters presented in this volume have covered a wide range of case studies; the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria and Spain; the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza; the Turkish settlers in Cyprus; the Iraqi refugees in Jordan and the internally displaced Iraqis in the northern Iraq; and the Afghan refugees in Iran. These chapters have opened up areas of research which are important to pursue. They have examined displacement and the impact of generation and gender including the physical and mental stress of refugee situations. They have explored the phenomenon of repatriation and its various forms such as voluntary repatriation and involuntary repatriation such as the case of the Afghan and Iraqi refugees. The chapters also have discussed the Palestinian ‘right of return’ within the context of legal, emotional and cultural expressions. In addition to these, the crisis in identity in exile has been addressed to provide a better understanding of assimilation, integration and alienation. Policies have also been considered to understand the international refugee regime as well as national and regional interpretations. The chapters in this volume hope to prove to be significant contributions to the understanding of the plight of refugees and displaced people and the political and economic universe in which they must operate. Refugees are categories of people who have lost the protection of their government and who thrive at the margins of the global nation-state system. Their struggle to survive depends upon turning their exile or forced migration around; to regain the protection of a government and to become ‘citizens’ once again either in the original homeland or a new nation. It is a quest all should sympathize with and support.

Assesses the success of the two humanitarian interventions in the Balkans – Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 – from the perspective of humanitarian organizations. It argues how, ironically, the effectiveness of organizations such as UNHCR can dissuade powerful states from taking the necessary steps to address the root causes of massive human rights violations. Slow and ambiguous action from the international community can raise false expectations on the part of suffering civilians, and embolden those who commit atrocities. The author argues that the political, military, and humanitarian strands of interventions are always closely interwoven, and draws a series of lessons from the Balkans experience: the need for the international community to act early, credibly, and consistently; the importance of preserving the identity of a humanitarian operation; the imperative to end the impunity of those who orchestrate and commit massive violations of human rights; and the importance of engaging the United Nations.

Examines the challenge of resettling refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and evaluates efforts to reverse ethnic cleansing and re-establish communities of mixed ethnicity. The reintegration of refugees and IDPs requires the establishment of a secure environment that in turn requires not only effective policing but also the prosecution of war criminals; the establishment of the rule of law, including a legal framework that enables the restitution of property; and a commitment of economic resources to ensure that returnees have adequate jobs, education, health care, and social services. The challenge also raises normative issues, including whether the restoration of multi-ethnic societies is always a proper and fitting objective and how far efforts should extend to achieve that objective given the further hardships for the displaced that it may entail.

Among the various categories of international migration, asylum and refugee protection is unique in its degree of formal institutionalization. It has its own international convention and a specialized UN agency, UNHCR. This structure is complemented by regional agreements and human rights norms. However, although the refugee regime guarantees the protection of refugees who reach the territory of a state, it offers little normative guidance on states' obligations to support other states in hosting refugees. Given that most refugees are in the developing world, this creates a fundamental imbalance, which defines the politics of refugee protection. This chapter explains the politics and the limitations of the existing regime. It offers politically feasible suggestions for ways in which the regime and the work of UNHCR might be adapted to meet the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century.

This essay examines the International Community School (ICS), a public charter school near Atlanta, Georgia, that brings refugee, immigrant, and local U.S. children together in one educational environment as a microcosmic global civic space in an emerging global civil society. It focuses on the local and particular instantiations of globalization, paying special attention to the role of religions.

In the 1990s, new conflicts broke out, particularly in connection with the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as several places in Africa. Initiatives were invented and re‐invented, and policy responses reverted to a largely reactive mode.

Ethnic and internal conflicts, which produced displacement emerged as key features of the decade, and sorely tested the capacity of the international community to respond to crises of forced displacement. The so‐called ‘CNN effect”’ led to engagement as well as disengagement (Somalia) and the term ‘nation building’ came into vogue and then later became an epithet. At the outset of the twenty‐first century, refugee policy is driven by selective apathy and creeping trepidation.

The delivery of humanitarian assistance in the midst of armed conflict, the creation of putative safe areas, and arrangements for temporary relocation and stays abroad were policy innovations tested in the case of the former Yugoslavia over the past decade. While increasingly prevalent, ‘state building’ in connection with the return and reintegration of refugees resulted in uneven outcomes over the past decade. Despite the mixed outcomes, the international community is likely to resort to such approaches in the future. Recent experience, however, teaches that expectations relating to state building should be modest. But the UN system and other international organizations must strengthen their capacities to meet even modest expectations.

During the 1990s, modesty in expectations remained the leitmotif of international humanitarian operations in places like Cambodia, Haiti, and East Timor. In Cambodia, human rights violations littered much of the recent past and remain a continuing problem. Following Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, a 1995 lessons‐learned report noted that there is no US government doctrine integrating the military component of a complex humanitarian operation with the civilian agencies responsible for recovery. As for East Timor, while quite limited as a policy precedent, it will probably be considered the paradigmatic test case for international state building.

Refugee policy needs to be more proactive, and a greater degree of international cooperation and a preventive orientation should animate humanitarian responses.

Several broad trends provide the context for current refugee policy responses. The debate over national sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, while not new, reached a crescendo over the past decade as refugees and population movements more generally necessarily diminished the exclusive prerogative of state sovereignty relating to border control in the modern world. Europe is a fertile setting for the development of regional capacities that can blend military and civilian responses to humanitarian crises, both within and outside Europe, including at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Yet, the difficulty of protecting and assisting internally displaced persons, continues to raise basic questions about the competence of the international system and the implementation mechanisms for human rights and humanitarian law. International migration provides the broad context for the evolution of refugee policy.