CCTS
Newsletter 7

"Right interventions/right conditions"

Ring-fenced money is often given for refugee return programmes in a certain period, linked to the donor nation’s own needs...

This group mapped out the problems of power, money and mandates involved with deciding when and how it is "right" to repatriate refugees. A first obstacle was to define who we were talking about. Refugees (taking shelter in another country), displaced people (displaced into another part of their own country), asylum seekers, and those "in limbo". All have different needs and different rights under international law. We then brainstormed the "ideal" conditions in which returns might take place, from the point of view of the refugees. These included actual safety, the level of safety as perceived by often fearful refugees, housing, trusted information about the situation in the home environment, and financial help or the means to support themselves once returned.

However, we also acknowledged that many of these conditions cannot be assessed with a yes/no, but are variables. Acceptable and perceived levels of risk vary from case to case. For example, displaced people in Bosnia fear for their safety when returning, while refugees who might have spent the war abroad and "missed" the war may fear a loss of financial security.

From this "wish list", we moved naturally onto the reality that UN agencies and NGOs are often under pressure to effect returns quickly. Refugees are also under pressure to leave their host countries or areas. Displaced people are at risk of summary deportation, while refugees can be pressured to return by cutting off benefits. We also noted that in Bosnia, pressure to return against the advice of UN protection officers has led to fatalities.

We questioned the right of, and ability of, "programme officers" to decide when the risk to returnees is acceptable. We also considered how the policies of nation-donors to the UN creates a false urgency for staff to act in the short term. Ring-fenced money is often given for refugee return programmes in a certain period, linked to the donor nation’s own needs (for example, in the case of Germany, to empty Germany of Bosnian refugees).

Those with UN experience noted that funds unspent by the end of such fixed funding periods are lost, and that funds which are unspent by the accounting deadline are deemed to have been "mismanaged".

Next we discussed how the priorities of donors, including donors to NGOs, often do not reflect the needs on the ground. For example, the great but underfunded need in Bosnia for internally displaced people to return home before the return of refugees from abroad. Balanced against these concerns, we noted that well-expressed local knowledge could sway funders in some circumstances. Also, for NGOs, and especially for refugees themselves, there is always the possibility of avoiding the donor trap by finding grassroots-up approaches which do not depend on project-funding. For example, the declaration of free zones by some local authorities in Bosnia.

The ideal versus the possible

Moving on, we compared how, faced with urgencies, whether real or funding-created, those facilitating returns could juggle the moral dilemmas of reconciling the ideal with the possible. In particular, we noted that, for some of us, our own personal agenda will determine whether we, for example, work through democratically elected yet corrupt and extremist local authorities which disempower and manipulate refugees, or bypass them creating parallel power structures. We questioned our right to do this, and similarly, the difficulty of avoiding the manipulation of angry, traumatised and dispossessed people by their own politicians.

In addition, we acknowledged that current models of return neglect the fact that the needs of individuals, their families and the ethnic or national group as a whole may be divergent. For instance, those with skills and education most needed for rebuilding and return are the most likely to be able to work abroad, and therefore often least willing to return, especially if it would involve being drafted or taxed retrospectively.

Theoretical match

The group also identified a difference in experience and approach between those who began work in a period of UN-sponsored mass return in the South, and others whose experiences are of areas where such mass returns are either not feasible, unfunded, or resisted by the refugees themselves.

In theory, the particular mandates of NGOs and the macro-concerns of the UN could create a well-covered complementary approach to return issues, with both UN and NGOs covering items which the other is not mandated or powerful enough to do. Yet, we were forced to admit that experience shows that distrust, and competition for funding, or even funding-led-existence means that this rarely occurs.

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