Background Guide: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Topic A: Rights and Responsibilities of Host Nations
Since 2011, a civil war in Syria has sent well over one million refugees across the nation’s border, with Lebanon and Jordan each receiving hundreds of thousands. The refugees themselves have received much international attention and aid, but the governments that host them have also had to endure the burden of so many exiles. In Lebanon, the assimilation of the Islamic refugee population threatens the delicate balance between Christians and Muslims in that country (Eakin). In Jordan, Syrian militants have been sneaking into the border camps to receive aid and supplies before returning to Syria to perpetuate the violence. In response, Jordanian troops have been posted outside the camps to prevent any refugees from leaving. These are just two examples of the hardships that host governments may endure when they are suddenly besieged by asylum-seekers from a nearby conflict.
The UNHCR’s 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees outlined the obligations of states to any refugees that find asylum within their borders. Chief among these guidelines is the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits any government from expelling refugees from its territory without aiding them. The Convention also demands that host nations provide refugees with many of the aid and resources that it offers to its own citizens, such as education, employment opportunities, health care, housing, and access to courts (UNHCR 1951). Ensuring that exiles have access to these rights is important, but providing them is often beyond the ability of developing nations (which are much more likely to be near the conflicts that create refugee crises). The UNHCR, in partnership with many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and developed nations, offers aid wherever possible, but a huge strain is still put on the host nation—especially in protracted crises.
Solutions to the challenges facing host nations are difficult to pin down because each country enters a refugee situation with its own weaknesses and conditions, and no two refugee populations present the same difficulties. The problem is largely in determining where the laws of the host government and the needs of the native population should take precedence, and when international law and the needs of the exiled masses come first. It should be kept in mind that developed and developing nations alike host refugee within their borders. Developed nations, though they may have the resources available to care for their refugee populations, can still see economic, social, and political issues arise in response to an influx of displaced persons. The UNHCR needs to explore the possibility of addressing the specific requirements of each host nation, as doing so may improve conditions for refugees and hosts alike.
Topic B: Repatriation and Resettlement
In the early 1990s, over 100,000 Bhutanese citizens were forced to flee to Nepal in the face of increasing ethnic tensions in Bhutan. There they stayed until 2007, when the UNHCR began resettling them to third countries at a rate of about 20,000 per year (Gurung). While it is good that the exiles have finally found permanent homes, the process is slow and there are displaced Bhutanese who are still without a true home after more than twenty years. There are hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Palestinians who have been in exile for even longer and still have little hope of returning to their countries of origin or finding resettling in new countries. Although the UNHCR is generally associated with the image of sprawling refugee camps, the organization’s ultimate goal is to empty those camps and put the displaced masses back into permanent, stable homes.
There are several options available when processing refugees. The most preferable is voluntary repatriation, returning refugees to the country from which they were exiled. This method is favored because if the refugees can simply return to their old homes, jobs, and ways of life, there is relatively little work for the UNHCR to do. The UNHCR has been repatriating since its origins after World War Two, when millions of displaced Europeans were returned to their homes. Repatriation is not always possible, however. If there is extensive damage to the agriculture or infrastructure of the home country, or if the social situation there has changed such that the exiles are no longer safe in their native lands (which was the case with the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe following WWII), then a new home must be found. The transfer of refugees to new homes in a different country is called resettlement. This solution poses its own set of challenges, as resettled persons require housing and employment, as well as instruction in the language and culture of their new nations if needed. Receiving resettled refugees is a large responsibility, and as such only 26 countries worldwide have resettlement programs. These programs combined only offer about 80,000 available spaces each year, a small fraction of the number of refugees seeking asylum, and 90% of these places come from only three nations: the United States, Canada, and Australia. If resettlement is to be improved, more nations must be incentivized to establish resettlement programs. Better programs could also be put in place to ease the transition to a third country.
A third option is to assimilate refugees into the host nations that they already occupy, a process called local integration. This approach is desirable when a population of refugees has been in a host nation so long that they have already begun to establish themselves there. The logical next step in this case is for the host nation to offer citizenship to its long-time refugees and complete the transition, but while the UNHCR encourages this, host governments are often unwilling to agree to that level of integration. Again, incentives and aid from the UNHCR may be able to improve local integration and make it a more widely available solution. The key to this topic is that the three solutions mentioned thus far are not mutually exclusive; they are often employed alongside one another in the same crisis. The difficulty is in deciding which option is best for a certain set of circumstances. Optimizing the existing solutions could allow more refugees to find homes each year, which is a necessity considering the millions of refugees across the globe that still have long to wait before any hope of a stable home.
Works Cited
“Durable Solutions: The Ultimate Goal,” UNHCR,
Eakin, Hugh, “Lebanon: Hezbollah’s Refugee Problem,” PulitzerCenter on Crisis
Reporting, August 15, 2013,
lebanon-syria-hermel-refugee-displaced-people-aid-hezbollah-war-red-crescent.
Gurung, Nini, “Refugee resettlement referral from Nepal reaches six-figure mark,”
UNHCR, April 26, 2013,
Nicholson, Mike, “Refugee Resettlement Needs Outpace Growing Number of
Resettlement Countries,” Migration Information Source, November 2012,
UNHCR. “1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees,” 1951.