Refugee Returns, Civic Differentiation, and Minority Rights in Croatia 1991-2004

Many studies on refugee returns tend to amalgamate the experiencesof migrants and concentrate on return as an end point of therefugee cycle. In reality, however, returnees do not share thesame experience and endure the effects of their displacementlong after they have returned. This study claims that a moreuseful tool of analysis is to consider both the paths of dislocationand the challenges of return and reintegration. It introducesthe concept of ‘civic differentiation’ as a meansof exploring patterns of return and reintegration in post-warCroatia where returning migrants enjoy vastly different accessto critical resources, above all housing and employment. Thisstudy considers the relevance for reintegration of ethnic identity,property ownership, exit routes and time spent in exile, anddescribes five return scenarios: settlement as ethnic colonization;forcible relocation as a result of regional policies; the returnof retirement; settlement following property repossession; marginalizationand exclusion.     

Widening the Protection Gap: The 'Politics of Citizenship' for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, 1948-2008

Lebanon has been a reluctant host to Palestinian refugees since1948. A mainstay of Lebanese policies vis-à-vis the Palestinianrefugees has been preventing their permanent integration andsettlement in the country. The question of naturalizing refugeesis one of the most contentious political issues in Lebanon today.Palestinian refugees tend to live in conflict-ridden environments,often at the margins of the host society. This first of allapplies to the camp-based refugees, who languish in dilapidatedand overcrowded camps. Unable to return to Palestine and marginalizedby the host society, they are caught in a legal limbo. In orderto understand the complex legal regime that governs their refugeestatus, it is necessary to examine their rights as refugeesin international law, regionally as hosted by Arab League statesand nationally as residents of Lebanon. The rights regime iscomplex and contributes to a critical ‘protection gap’for the refugees. This article demonstrates how this protectiongap was created and widened by historically contingent, international,regional and national legal rights regimes.     

The Long, 'Last Step'? Reintegration of Repatriates in Eritrea

The reintegration of repatriates in Eritrea is a relevant andpressing issue. This study explores four dimensions of refugeereintegration based on primary data gathered from 80 householdsthat repatriated back to eastern Eritrea from Sudan. The aimis to assess their reception by the host population and thenature of resource competition prompted by their arrival. Theanalysis also focuses on changes in livelihood and materialwellbeing among repatriated households as well as their outlooktowards the future. This paper highlights many challenges tointegration that have resulted in keeping returnees in a suspendedstate of poverty and dependence. By way of conclusion, it discussesthe problematic nature of the ‘reintegration’ byunderscoring important contrasts in concepts and perceptionsof ‘home’ on the part of different players in theEritrean repatriation story.     

Back Home? Refugees' Experiences of their First Visit back to their Country of Origin

This paper argues that the first visit ‘back home’is important for refugees because it acts as a catalyst forrenewed engagements with host country and country of origin.The study shows that conditions in both countries impact ondecision-making and ultimately that integration and return cancoexist. The first re-connection with ‘home’ isdescribed as a memorable event in and of itself. Marked by anawareness of the passing of time, it provides both an end towaiting and worrying and a measure of one's progress (or lackof) in life, thus enabling participants to move on. Establishmentof safety nets in both host and home countries as a conditionfor permanent return distinguishes the predicament of theserefugees from that of other migrants. As the meeting betweenimagination and reality, the first visit contributes to there-examination of the refugee cycle, the myth of return andthe meaning of home in a context where return encompasses onediscrete experience, the visit, and subsequent events. Overall,the paper provides a link between the literature on return asimagined while in exile and accounts of the reality of post-return.     

Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

This article focuses on the construction of “soldier” and “victim” by post-conflict programs in Sierra Leone. Focusing on the absence of individual testimonies and interviews that inform representations of women and girls post-conflict, this article demonstrates that the ideal of the female war victim has limited the ways in which female combatants are addressed by disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs in Sierra Leone. It is argued that titles given to female soldiers such as “females associated with the war,” “dependents,” or “camp followers” reveal the reluctance of reintegration agencies to identify females who participated in war as soldiers. In addition, I argue that men and masculinity are securitized post-conflict while women—even when they act in highly securitized roles such as soldiers—are desecuritized and, in effect, de-emphasized in post-conflict policy making. The impact of this categorization has been that the reintegration process for men has been securitized, or emphasized as an essential element of the transition from war to peace. In contrast, the reintegration process for females has been deemed a social concern and has been moralized as a return to normal.     

Civil war,genocide and political order in Rwanda: security implications of refugee return

Scholars and policy-makers now recognise the security risks posed by refugee militarisation, including the spread of civil war and regional destabilisation. These analysts pay little attention to the militarised exiles once they return home. Instead, repatriation is uncritically accepted as the most desirable solution to refugee crises and as a prerequisite for post-conflict peace-building. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of the refugees desire a peaceful and stable return home. For the minority of militarised exiles, however, return may facilitate a continuance of their programme of political violence. This article examines whether and how previously militarised refugees engage in political violence upon return. It does this by tracing five decades of forced migration in Rwanda, paying particular attention to the Tutsi exiles in Uganda and their eventual militarised return. In the Rwandan case, leaders relied on the mechanism of socialisation, defined as transformative learning and the development of new worldviews, to achieve their goals. Such socialisation operated in exile to form the Tutsi exile army and later functioned as a tool for the coercive imposition of political control in Rwanda.     

Self-settled Refugees in Uganda: An Alternative Approach to Displacement?

This paper investigates the complex security and economic dynamicsthat influence the lives and opportunities of self-settled refugeesliving in Uganda. It focuses on the opportunities and problemsfaced by self-settled refugees, and questions the assumptionthat Uganda's current local settlement policy is best suitedto the country's social, economic and political realities. Itsuggests that far from being passive victims, self-settled refugeesare taking control of their lives without any additional externalassistance and are planning for the day they can return to theirhomeland. Consequently, the paper argues that there is reasonto believe that local integration is likely to succeed whereother models have failed.     

Humiliation Experienced by Somali Refugees in Norway

Life as a refugee attempting to create a new life in an unfamiliarcountry is filled with uncertainties. Due to a lack of languageand cultural knowledge, misunderstandings occur. People in thesecircumstances are vulnerable to experiences of humiliation.The majority population's prejudices against strangers alsocontribute to newly-arrived refugees experiencing more humiliatingsituations than do others. This paper attempts to analyse experiencesof humiliation among refugees, using Somali refugees as a case.The principal research question here is why and how refugeesexperience humiliation in exile. What kinds of situations triggerfeelings of humiliation in refugees and why are these situationsexperienced as humiliating? This paper attempts to develop atheory of humiliating experiences among exiles, based on interviewswith 27 Somalis and 20 Norwegians, as well as participatoryobservations and meetings with a focus group. Refugees in asociety vastly different from that of their home country mightbe vulnerable to intimidation, and might also be met in hurtfulways. Humiliation occurring in the home country might continuein the new country, and new types of humiliating situationsmight develop between individuals from the home country in thenew setting. The theory set forth here identifies typical reactionsof the refugees to certain humiliating situations, and offerssome suggestions for ways to prevent humiliating experiences.     

Reintegration and the relevance of social relations: the case of Lebanon

The DDR process that took place in Lebanon after the internal wars (1975–89), based on the Ta'if Accord (1989), was not co-ordinated by any international organisation. This paper assesses the reintegration of a number of combatants of one of the militias, the Lebanese Forces, placing particular emphasis on the context in which it unfolded. A programme of reintegration into the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was proposed to the ex-combatants, but because of the high number on one side and because of the situation within the LAF itself (a pluri-religious organisation under reorganisation) this programme had little effect on the process. Instead the majority of the ex-combatants came to rely on their family and network established within the militia for their social and economic reintegration. This study finds that there has been little rupture between life as combatants and life as civilians. Three contextual factors were particularly important: the small size of the country, the rhythm of the war where periods of combat alternated with periods of calm, and the close contact combatants managed to keep with their family, work, schools and universities. A key lesson for DDR processes more generally stems from the study: DDR initiatives are likely to be most effective when they work alongside and augment indigenous positive social processes contributing to reintegration.     

Mozambican refugee resettlement: survival strategies of involuntary migrants in South Africa

Five cases of individual Mozambique refugees who settled in the Rhulani settlement in the Gazankulu homeland of South Africa during the Mozambique civil war reveal that successful resettlement at war's end is dependent on living conditions in the home versus the refugee camps for Rhulani refugees. The case studies were selected from open ended interviews with about 48 individuals. Push factors are identified as follows: autonomy in refugee camps, level of support for refugees returning, the process of refugee settlement in camps and the level of socioeconomic development among exiled refugees, and the perception of refugees of safe political conditions in areas of origin. Pull factors are identified as level of cohesion in the refugee community, ethnic ties with the host community, and long length of stay and greater acculturation. The General Peace Agreement in 1992 and collaborative planning resulted in Rhulani refugee resettlement in areas of origin and refugees' return to Rhulani. The Mozambique resettlement areas were not viable settlements with access to productive activities and services but land and infrastructure ravaged by war. The Rhulani settlement included about 3000 refugees who lived across the road from the village of Lillydale (Nkwinyamahembe) in Mhala district. Most refugees came from the Magude province of Mozambique (Mapulanguene, Macaene, Chikwembu, and Savele villages). The case studies provide information about the nature of the involuntary migration, the stresses and adjustment strategies of refugees, and the physical and sociopolitical context of the process of settlement and resettlement. The case studies profile some of the refugees' experiences. This refugee population is unique in receiving little relief activity and by the role of the homeland government in restricting gainful employment, owning livestock, and use of only a 22 square meter plot of land. The case studies include a spokesperson for the refugees in the camp, an older man who had been a labor migrant in the South African mines, a woman whose husband had been a labor migrant, a 9-year-old child traveling with two sisters and his maternal grandfather, and a 55 year old former labor migrant and long-term Rhulani refugee resident.     

Mediating the War of Olives and Pines: Consensus-Based Land-Use Planning in a Multicultural Setting

The proposed Nahal Tzalmon national park lies in the Galilee region of northern Israel. It encompasses land of unique natural beauty, some of which is occupied by Arab-Israeli families. Statutory plans defining the park's boundaries were enacted more than twenty years ago. Despite ongoing preparation, however, the park has not yet opened to the public, in part because of continuous conflict between the Israeli government authorities and the resident families over property rights affecting construction, land use, and nature preservation.
In 2000, after a long period of stagnation and discord, the Joint Environmental Mediation Service ( JEMS), guided by its founding organizations — the Consensus Building Institute and the Israel–Palestine Center for Research and Information — led a mediation process in the region. This was the first such process in the history of Israeli land-use planning. The mediation resulted in a settlement that was agreed to and signed by nearly all parties on July 8, 2004. The agreement allows residents to remain on their land and it includes incentives, such as park employment, to ensure that they help preserve the natural environment. Plans based on this agreement are currently undergoing state ratification, although several implementation challenges are yet to be resolved.
This case points to the importance of having a mediation team knowledgeable about and sensitive to local cultural norms and the difficulties of ensuring appropriate representation in the absence of a strong civic culture and organized advocacy groups. It also highlights the requisite for ensuring that all parties thoroughly understand the consensus building process and how it fits in with established bureaucratic procedures, as well as the critical need to secure strong support from implementing agencies at the outset.     

Whose House is this Anyway? IDP and Refugee Return in Post-Saddam Iraq

Although many people displaced by Saddam's regime over the yearslooked forward to returning as soon as the 2003 war ended, anumber of problems emerged which continued to bedevil the returnprocess as late as one year after the war. These problems includedan unclear political future for the country, competing politicaland sectarian forces that often view IDPs and refugees as strategictools or weapons, a hesitant and initially undecided Coalitionpolicy on the return issue, unclear mandates for the variousactors that could assist with returns, lack of funding, andmost importantly of all, an extremely poor security situationwhich has impeded or even blocked all progress on the returnissue. Nonetheless, because Iraq's Ba'athist dictatorship wasthe overwhelming cause of displacement in the country to beginwith, the future does hold some hope for Iraqi displaced persons.This paper examines the causes of return problems in Iraq andhow various authorities in post-Ba'athist Iraq are addressingthe return issue. Particularly around the contested city ofKirkuk, problems relating to the return issue risk ignitingethnic conflict and possibly even civil war in Iraq as a whole.The article examines the return issue for the period from March2003 to June 2004, focusing especially on northern Iraq andKirkuk. The research presented here is based on fieldwork conductedin Iraq by the author between September 2003 and May 2004. Theauthor went to Iraq independently, with the assistance of aCanadian Department of National Defence post-doctoral researchgrant. Interviews were conducted with US and Coalition ProvisionalAuthority officials, Iraqi Interim Government officials, KurdistanRegional Government officials, NGO workers, and IDPs themselvesduring visits to camps around Kirkuk and Baghdad.     

EU-Libya Cooperation on Migration: A Raw Deal for Refugees and Migrants?

Libya's emergence as a key jumping-off point for entry intoEurope by sea has created a sense of urgency within the EU,which seeks to prevent arrivals from this new point of departure,and has led to the initiation of EU–Libya cooperationon migration. This article argues that the EU is failing toadopt an integrated approach to migration management in Libya,despite its repeated assurances to the contrary. It examinesEU–Libya cooperation, still in its early stages, and analysesthe experiences of refugees and migrants in Libya and on theirjourneys to Europe. Both elements strongly indicate that thecurrent approach, which focuses on border control and surveillance,is likely to meet with limited success in achieving the EU'saims of stemming the flow of irregular migrants arriving fromLibya in Italy and Malta, protecting the human rights of thosein transit and ensuring humanitarian outcomes for them.     

Negotiations for Refugee Repatriation or Local Settlement: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

This paper uses a model developed by Brams and Doherty (1993) to examine negotiations among a country of origin, a country of asylum, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a refugee crisis. A unique feature of the paper is its treatment of the country of asylum as a separate player in the negotiations, which makes the choice to permit or deny settlement in the asylum country endogenous.
The model is applied to two groups of Rwandese refugees: Tutsis living in exile in Burundi for three decades and Hutus in Zaire during the 1990s. The contrasting circumstances surrounding these two refugee crises provide an opportunity to study asylum countries that were sympathetic and unsympathetic, and to model changing attitudes in the country of origin and the international community toward the refugees. For both crises, the predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the unfolding of the negotiation process and the opportunities that eventually became available to the refugees.     

A re-conceptualisation of ex-combatant reintegration: ‘social reintegration’ approach

The social reintegration of former combatants is the most important aspect of the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) process, but there is a paucity of literature providing a clear understanding of its challenges and what it actually constitutes, and, more importantly, how it could be planned and implemented in peace-building environments. In order to respond to the lack of theory, the paper will use the desistance theory which outlines assistance models for ex-offenders' re-entry into society and addresses the question of how social reintegration can be perceived and structured effectively in the overall DDR operational landscape. The proposed approach is presented through a matrix of relationships between the elements of ‘emphasis on the combatant’ and ‘emphasis on the community’ in terms of ‘low’ and ‘high’ levels, resulting in the four main models for community re-entry: ‘self-demobilisation’, ‘reinsertion’, ‘community-located reintegration’ and ‘social reintegration’. Having explored what they constitute in the practice of DDR in the second part of the analysis section, the social reintegration approach, which is structured over the dimensions of ‘family and community’, ‘sustainable employment’ and ‘civic responsibilities’, will be elaborated in the final part.     

The political consequences of reintegration programmes in current peace-building: a framework for analysis

This article demonstrates how democracy and peace-building can interlink at the micro-level, as demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programmes feed into democratisation via their rarely studied political impact among individual ex-combatants. Using the reintegration experiences of ex-combatants in Liberia and the literature on policy feedback, this article demonstrates the varying impacts of current peace-building on the politics of ex-combatants, and develops a framework to analyse this relationship further in other cases. This theoretical framework offers a tool to grapple with and make sense of the political consequences of DDR, thereby clarifying how reintegration programmes structure and condition the ex-combatants' continued political voice. In particular, it is suggested that reintegration programmes influence the politics of ex-combatants either through resources obtained in the programmes, enabling access to politics in a different way, or through their institutional design and procedural traits, offering cognitive cues that either emphasise democratic norms or promote conflict in politics at large.     

Refugee Return Migration: Return Migration from Sweden to Chile, Iran and Poland 1973 1996

In this paper, return migration from Sweden to three sourcesof refugee immigration is analysed, with a focus on the effectof political change in 1990. Chilean immigrants reacted morestrongly to political liberalization in the home country thanPolish immigrants did, primarily due to more favourable economiccircumstances in Chile compared to Poland in the 1990s. In fact,the increase in Polish return migration propensity after 1990is not statistically different from the Iranian increase, inspite of the absence of political liberalization in Iran. Thereare significant cohort differences within the Chilean group,indicating an element of economically motivated migration withinthe last waves of Chilean refugee immigration in the late 1980s.Hence, successful implementation of schemes of voluntary returnmigration for refugees will not only be dependent on an improvedpolitical situation in the source country, but will also behighly dependent on economic circumstances.     

Refugee Law and Protection in Brazil: a Model in South America?

Brazil has been committed to International Refugee Law sincethe 1950s. For much of this period, however, the country wasunder a dictatorship which made the implementation of refugeeprotection precarious, although refugees and asylum seekerscould count on the assistance of UNHCR and its implementingpartners—NGOs connected to the Catholic Church which remainpartners of UNHCR till today. Following re-democratization,Brazil has not only passed a specific law on refugees, but hasevolved to become a resettlement country. These changes haveled Brazil to be regarded as a model in refugee protection inSouth America. This paper aims to assess whether or not Brazilis fulfilling the said role by describing the evolution of refugeelaw and protection in the country.     

Militias,tribes and insurgents: The challenge of political reintegration in Iraq

Following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States was confronted with one of the most complex state-building enterprises of recent history. A central component of state building, emphasised in the literature yet given scant attention at the time of the invasion, is the process of political reintegration: the transformation of armed groups into political actors willing to participate peacefully in the political future of the country. In Iraq, political reintegration was a particularly important challenge, relating both to the armed forces of the disposed regime and to the Kurdish and Shia militias eager to play a role in the new political system. This article examines the different approaches employed by the United States toward the political reintegration of irregular armed groups, from the policy vacuum of 2003 to the informal reintegration seen during the course of the so-called “surge” in 2007 and 2008. The case study has significant implications for the importance of getting political reintegration right—and the long-term costs of getting it badly wrong.     

A future disarmament,demobilisation and reintegration process in Sudan: lessons learned from Ethiopia,Mozambique and Uganda

The conflict that broke out in Sudan on the eve of its independence from Britain in 1956 has devastated the country, retarded developmental progress, drained human resources and damaged the social fabric of the entire nation. However, the Protocol of Machakos which was signed by the Government of the Republic of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army on 20 July 2002, states the commitment of the parties to a negotiated, peaceful and comprehensive resolution to the conflict within the unity of the country. With peace now in sight, the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants is essential to avoid the mistakes made in 1972. It is crucial to build a new future for the generations that have suffered so much in five decades of war. This paper examines the challenges that might confront DDR in post-conflict Sudan. It draws on past experience following the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement between the regime of President Gaffar Mohammed Nimeiri and the Anya-nya rebels, and on the experiences of countries that have gone through similar situations, such as Ethiopia, Mozambique and Uganda.