REFUGE Book excerpt,
The principal way in which the refugee regime provides protection is ineffective and outdated. Since the 1980s the dominant model has been the long- term provision of assistance in refugee camps and closed settlements. A model designed to provide immediate access to food, clothing, and shelter during humanitarian emergencies has become the way in which the international community provides refugees with long- term support. Frequently located in remote and insecure border areas, the “camp” has become the primary means of protection for refugees around the world.
Until the 1980s, the main way of protecting people was a reflection of the aspiration of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, now signed by 145 countries, to support autonomy. In the North, resettlement was accepted as the dominant durable solution for refugees. Most refugees were moving East–West, fleeing Communism, rather than coming from the South. Repatriation was therefore seen as impossible and immediate, long- term integration as the most politically desirable option. In the South, refugees were generally allowed to spontaneously settle in rural areas. From Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania to Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia, Africa’s benevolent authoritarian rulers saw it as a pan- African duty to openly provide access to their territories. But this was also the case in other parts of the world — for Afghans in Iran and Guatemalans in Mexico, for instance.
Since the 1980s, though, a very different model has emerged with the advent of a global humanitarian industry intent on distributing food, tents, and blankets. Gradually, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR) was asked by governments to provide organized assistance and all too willingly obliged, especially once it found itself without purpose and without money at the end of the Cold War. Host governments in the South, challenged by democratization and structural adjustment, found a means to avert public concern about pressure on resources by abdicating responsibility to internationally managed enclaves in peripheral areas of their countries. Moreover, as new opportunities emerged for “jet age” asylum-seekers to move from South to North, Northern donor states began to view refugee camps as a means to contain refugee populations who otherwise might try to turn up at their borders.
To take an example, following independence from British rule Tanzania had, under the one-party state rule of Nyerere, opened its borders to allow refugees from across the continent — notably Burundians, Rwandans, and those fleeing l i beration wars across Southern Africa — to self- settle in rural areas. It afforded them access to the same agricultural, educational, and health opportunities as those available to host nationals under the country’s socialist Ujamaa model. International development actors — and not humanitarian actors — provided integrated development support that simultaneously benefited citizens and refugees alike. The example has been widely cited as illustrative of a “golden age” in African refugee policy. It was only with the introduction of competitive elections and the move towards privatization and retrenchment of public services that Tanzanian governments began to shift towards en- campment policies, calling upon the international community to take on a “care and maintenance” role, and that refugee camps began to emerge across the country.
In Kenya, for instance, the Dadaab refugee camps were created in 1993 to host the mass influx of Somali refugees who arrived following the outbreak of the country’s civil war in 1991. The cluster of three camps were designed with a maximum capacity of 120,000 people, but in 2011 the combined populations swelled to host over 500,000 Somali refugees and today it hosts over 300,000 in dire conditions, after some went home or moved onwards. The camps are located in the remote border region of the North Eastern Province, and are the subject of violent crossborder incursions from warring factions and terrorist groups operating in Somalia. Concerned with security and competition for resources, the government has adopted a strict encampment policy, generally requiring Somalis to remain in the camps and denying them access to the formal economy. The international community provided seemingly indefinite humanitarian assistance, which was inevitably inadequate. A funding model based on a short- term emergency response is being used to pay for permanent needs.
Dadaab is illustrative of socalled protracted refugee situations, in which refugees have been in exile for at least five years, and are often denied access to the right to work or to freedom of movement. Today, 54 per cent of the world’s 21.3 million refugees are in such situations. UNHCR is responsible for refugees in 32 separate protracted refugee situations around the world, with an average length of exile of 26 years. Twentythree of these have lasted more than two decades. In principle, refugees should have timely access to “durable solutions”: a pathway towards permanent reintegration into the state system. But in practice they are getting trapped in indefinite limbo without even the most basic sources of autonomy and opportunity. In 2015, for instance, fewer than 300,000 of the world’s refugees received access to either resettlement, repatriation, or local integration. The rest were forced to remain in limbo for another year; the majority without even the right to work. They risk becoming perpetual refugees.
From a refugee’s perspective, long-term encampment has been described as a “denial of rights and a waste of humanity.” Wuli, for example, is a refugee from Somaliland. He has lived in the Ali- Addeh refugee camp in Djibouti since fleeing his own country at the age of 18 in 1988. Nearly three decades later, he still lives in the same inhospitable camp, in an arid and remote area where temperatures regularly exceed 40 C. AliAddeh, home to around 12,000 refugees, has no markets nearby and refugees are not allowed to work. Post-primary educational opportunities are limited, so Wuli provides informal education to young refugees, many born in the camp, in his own tent. He explained: “Man does not live on food and water alone but on hope. My hope is gone but I pass it on to the next generation.” His situation is typical of so much wasted talent across the world’s refugee camps.
These protracted circumstances are bad not only for refugees, but also for host states and the rest of the world. They represent not only a human rights issue but also a security challenge. Without opportunity, they risk creating a lost generation — with people sometimes being born in, growing up in, and becoming adults in camps. They provide i deal nurturing grounds for recruitment and radicalization by rebel groups, militias, and terrorist organizations, who can exploit the presence of an alienated, unemployed, and bored youth population. A range of studies have shown how protracted refugee camps in border locations may serve as vectors for the spread of conflict and violence. We heard stories in the Za’atari refugee camp of parents explaining how their grown- up children had chosen to return to fight in Syria rather than wait passively in the camp.
There are very few viable alternatives to the dominant campbased “care and maintenance” model. But the model is so inadequate that refugees are moving onwards of their own accord. To take the example of Syrian refugees, just 9 per cent actually live in camps, because they offer such limited prospects. Only around 10 million of the world’s refugees now live in camps.
Cities like Beirut and Amman have become the most common alternative to camp life. Reflecting a wider trend, urbanization is shaping the lived reality of refugees — and large numbers live in global metropolises like Nairobi, Johannesburg, Bangkok, São Paulo, Istanbul, and Cairo. Over half the world’s refugees, including 75 per cent of Syrians, live in urban areas in neighbouring countries. But, in cities, assistance is limited and the formal right to work is usually restricted. Although UNHCR has an Urban Refugee Policy, it offers very little assistance in practice, with most urban refugees receiving no tangible help. By moving to cities, most refugees relinquish all formal support but also end up locked out of the formal economy. The world simply has not created a refugee assistance model compatible with a world of global cities. The actors who really matter for urban life — municipal authorities, employers, refugee-led community organizations — are too often excluded from such models. The result is that too many refugees in cities find themselves without aid and facing destitution.
There is another option, which increasing numbers of Syrians and others around the world are taking: risking death to travel onwards to another country. And that’s what we’re seeing in Europe now: the growth in secondary movements impelled by the inadequacies of the global protection system. Around the world, refugees are effectively offered a false choice between three dismal options: encampment, urban destitution, or perilous journeys. For refugees, these inadequate options — camps, urban destitution, and boats – are the modern global refugee regime. From Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Copyright © 2017, published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Betts is the Leopold W. Muller Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs at the University of Oxford, where he is also director of the Refugee Studies Centre. He has previously worked for UNHCR and as a consultant to a range of international organizations and governments. Collier is professor of economics at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His book The Bottom Billion has won the Lionel Gelber Prize, the Arthur Ross Prize awarded by the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Corine Prize.
TRAPPED IN INDEFINITE LIMBO WITHOUT THE MOST BASIC SOURCES OF AUTONOMY.