Humanitarian Action: A De Facto Durable Solution of Refugee Crisis?

Abstract

Humanitarian action tends to save lives of millions of forcibly displaced people around the globe during emergencies. In principle, it is temporary, but it continues for an extended period in the case of refugee crises. Among the three available durable solutions, the UN agencies can hardly implement them. Eventually, those solutions do not work in most of the twenty-first century refugee crisis. This study raises the question whether humanitarian action is likely to be another durable solution or not, and why it is preferred to other durable solutions to refugee crises. To that end, this study investigates the dynamics of ranges of solutions to protracted refugee situations (PRS) in different corners of the world. After an exploration of relevant secondary resources in qualitative setting, it concludes that statism causes many unavoidable politico-economic challenges to the traditional durable solutions while many self-devised comfort zones encourage the overuse of humanitarian action like a long-term solution to the problems. Addressing this incongruity of durable solutions to refugee crisis, the study urges that refugee regime reduce the dependency on humanitarian action and thus reinforce truly for alternative, less statist or transnational, and sustainable solutions.