Preventive detention

Abstract

For nearly fifty years, any discussion of “refugees” presupposed “exile” as a tautological given, the starting point either for providing temporary asylum or for solving the refugee problem. During that time, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) promoted three durable solutions for refugees: (1) voluntary repatriation, (2) local settlement, or (3) third‐country resettlement. Each solution took exile as its starting point; and two of them accepted exile as a permanent fact. Although voluntary repatriation was the preferred solution, in most cases during the Cold War the prospects for voluntary return seemed remote, even illusory. A few lucky refugees made the best of exile, resettling in Canada, the United States, or some other far‐off country; but the overwhelming majority remained in a holding pattern, languishing for years in grim, Third World refugee camps. They remained refugees with no solution. They could not be said to be locally integrated (durable solution no. 2), because their rights were often stricdy limited. At best, they enjoyed a temporary asylum, tolerated until the time came when it would be safe to go home. With the end of the Cold War, and with the prospect of renewed refugee flows having more to do with local, often ethnic, conflicts than with superpower or ideological rivalries, the international community has been determined not to repeat what it sees as its past mistakes. To be avoided at all costs is the prospect of creating new lost generations, stagnating in refugee camps—the breeding grounds of frustration, dependency, violence, and political extremism. Beyond the toll on the lives of refugees, however, is a growing view among host governments that the post‐Cold War costs of hosting refugees far outweigh the benefits. Why, the reasoning goes, should outside countries that do not produce the human rights abuses and political violence that cause refugees to flee be forced to shoulder the refugee burden? Why, due to the bad luck of their geography, should countries such as Thailand, Turkey, Mexico, Pakistan, or Djibouti have their own stability threatened by the human dislocations caused by their neighbors? Is there no way to redirect the problem back to its source?