Why do we still have refugee camps?
By Michael Kagan
Michael Kagan is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He maintains the independent blog rsdwatch.org about the challenges of refugee status determination by UNHCR and in collecting basic data about where and how UNHCR does so.
Summary of online blog2
The Champs Elysees street in Za'atri camp, Jordan - the main market street created by the Syrian refugees
Below is a summary of a contribution by Michael Kagan on the Urban Refugees Debate Forum1 that scrutinises UNHCR policy and practice around urban refugees, posted 10th August 2013. It is followed by a short postscript (again summary of online comment) by Jeff Crisp (former UNHCR staff)(eds).
Four years ago, UNHCR issued its Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas3, perhaps the UN’s most important 21st century statement of protection strategy. In UNHCR’s words, the new policy "marks the beginning of a new approach." Refugees are now to be reconceived as people with autonomy. The focus is to be on their rights, their legal status, their ability to support themselves and to raise their families in dignity. But as always, the situation on the ground is more complicated. Four years on, the world is still littered with refugee camps imposed on refugees. In East Africa, on the Thai border with Burma, and in dozens of other places, refugees are directly or indirectly forced to live in remote camps.
This gap between policy and practice is the background for several new critiques of UNHCR’s urban refugee policy4.  The gist of the critiques, with varying degrees of nuance, is that old habits die hard, and while the new policy sounds good, UNHCR’s commitment to urban refugees in practice is not always clear. Camps are still abundant, and they are still central to UNHCR’s work.
The critiques warrant a response, and in the process we might be able to bring the rhetoric about rights-based refugee policy closer to realities on the ground.
UNHCR’s urban refugee policy has long been entangled with a great deal of symbolism beyond the scope of any specific text. On paper, the 1997 urban policy was actually a bit of a mixed bag, with at least grudging acknowledgement that refugees have rights. UNHCR explains the new urban policy as an adaptation to new circumstances. UNHCR says that with increased rural-to-urban migration, it makes sense to embrace urban refugees in 2009, whereas in 1997, refugees were reasonably assumed to be rural. To its great credit, the 2009 urban refugee policy is quite self-critical about the "negative attitude of some UNHCR staff" that contributes to tension with urban refugee communities. We should also not forget that the new policy grew out of nearly a decade of critical reports and studies, many of which were sponsored by UNHCR itself (especially by the Policy Development and Evaluation Service).
In 2009, I heard high ranking UNHCR officials speak eloquently about what was misguided in the old policy and about the importance of adopting a new approach to urban refugees. I heard UNHCR officials talk about the evils of forced encampment, the degradation of forced isolation, the importance of refugee rights.
Results-based accounting doesn’t always work with UNHCR
When UNHCR publishes a document that does not quite match facts on the ground, it is tempting to question UNHCR’s motivations. In the sharpest terms, Simone Haysom5 of the Humanitarian Policy Group wrote: "UNHCR’s own commitment to its landmark 2009 urban refugee policy should be called into question."Â Tim Morris and Sonia Ben Ali6Â ask if UNHCR is reviewing its own work in implementing its new policy with "an air of complacency?" (question mark original).
The hint of hypocrisy is a seductive hook for criticism. But it’s analytically limited. It is certainly fair to compare UNHCR policy and UNHCR practice. In fact, if we want UNHCR to fulfil its mission, it is essential. As Verdirame and Pobjoy7 write: If the 2009 Urban Policy had been adopted by the department of a national government in a free country, its implementation would be subject to various checks and balances. … These checks and balances are not in place in the case of UNHCR and international institutions in general.
The only way to try to fill this gap is for those on the outside to ask tough questions of UNHCR, and to offer tough critique when UNHCR is not doing what it should be. When a matter of refugee policy is fully within UNHCR’s authority, it’s especially fair to hold UNHCR’s feet to the fire.
But not everything that affects refugees is within UNHCR’s control. The mere fact that many refugees are still warehoused in camps does not on its own mean UNHCR is to blame. The 2009 Urban Refugee Policy is, for the most part, a statement of what UNHCR wants to happen, not about what UNHCR will actually be able to do. Since the policy aspires to far more than UNHCR can deliver on its own, one has to be cautious about measuring UNHCR by the results.
It is always possible to find gaps in UNHCR practice. It is a big, complicated, human institution being pulled in competing directions, working under severe constraints in dozens of countries to try to do essential things that, quite often, no one else will do. Its staff do amazing things, and also make mistakes. On any given day with UNHCR, you can find heroism, innovation, competence, mediocrity, indifference, and occasional cruelty. Sometimes you can find all of that in one field office.
It is often difficult to discern whether a UNHCR failure is merely an exception, or the tip of an iceberg. Moreover, while UNHCR tries hard to speak with one voice in public documents, it is always churning with internal divisions and debates. These internal contradictions can lead to accusations of hypocrisy and insincerity, since some people who work for UNHCR really are not committed to the official policy. But it also simply reflects the complexity and difficulty of the subject matter.
That doesn’t mean that UNHCR should not face tough questions about its activities. It is important to ask, as Verdirame and Pobjoy do, why urban refugee programmes still seem to be getting the short end of the stick in the UNHCR budget. And it is reasonable to ask if UNHCR is being assertive enough in telling governments that urban refugees exist, and that they have rights. Take, as an example, Tanzania, where legislation restricts refugees to camps and largely prohibits refugees from living in the city. It is reasonable to ask UNHCR if it is doing all it can to convince the government that refugees have a right to be in the city, and to provide them assistance.
These are legitimate questions. But they should not necessarily be understood as criticisms. Rather, they are an effort to prevent hard choices from being covered over by soothing diplomatic verbiage. The world is complicated, and responsibility is often diffuse. UNHCR needs to be held accountable, but its critics also need to be modest in not exaggerating UNHCR’s flaws.
Interpreting UNHCR silence
For Haysom, Morris and Ben Ali, and Verdirame and Pobjoy, a primary basis for questioning UNHCR’s commitment to the new urban policy is the fact that UNHCR has not always publicly criticized governments for forcing refugees into camps.
Morris and Ben Ali’s essay is in many ways a critique of the way UN agencies talk. They give the example of how Human Rights Watch reported that it was "impossible" for refugees in Nairobi to get ID cards, but UNHCR would only say it was "challenging." Anyone who has worked in this field has learned to engage in some semantic softening like this. Don’t say you are outraged. Say you are concerned. Don’t say you had an argument. Say you had a dialogue. And if you don’t have anything nice to say, maybe don’t say anything at all. Let’s call this Geneva-speak.
There’s some force to this critique - and not just about urban refugees. UNHCR wants to be, and largely is, the primary global authority on refugee issues. But can UNHCR credibly play this role and still be selective about revealing what it knows about what certain governments are doing?
What are we to make of the fact that earlier this year the High Commissioner applauded the United Arab Emirates for its "very generous commitment" to Syrian refugees (i.e. as a donor and logistics hub), despite the UAE’s atrocious record on migrant rights generally, including reports of torturing Syrian refugees?
In the future, I would suggest that UNHCR avoid the appearance that its compliments (or its silence) can be bought. But even if UNHCR avoids that pitfall in the future, Morris and Ben Ali are pointing to a more ambiguous problem. What about UNHCR’s general hesitation about criticizing governments? Consider Haysom’s criticism8 of UNHCR in Kenya, when the Kenyan Government was planning to force all refugees into the camps:
While the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said it will not support forcible relocation to the camps and has urged the government to abandon the directive, it has committed assistance to refugees who wish to voluntarily return to camps. UNHCR has joined a government-run taskforce to oversee the implementation of the directive to ensure it is done humanely.
Essentially, UNHCR was engaged in a balancing act. It opposed forced encampment. But if it were to happen, UNHCR wanted to be involved so as to make it as humane as possible. This is a morally debatable strategy, certainly. UNHCR’s involvement will lend legitimacy to an oppressive policy. But it will also probably relieve immediate suffering.
The fact of the matter is that UNHCR is not Human Rights Watch. Putting out public statements is not its main work. UNHCR has millions of people on the ground depending on it. Every day, UNHCR staff are trying to get refugees out of detention, trying to get deputy ministers of the interior on the phone, trying to stop deportations. It is important for refugees that the deputy ministers return UNHCR’s phone calls (and they often don’t). But the danger is that by staying engaged, UNHCR will implicitly legitimize policies that violate refugee rights, when the offending government says, "We did this in consultation with the UN."
The question is where to draw the red line, a question that has followed the humanitarian movement since the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Although UNHCR does not have a doctrine of neutrality quite as developed as the ICRC, UNHCR’s approach owes much to the ICRC heritage. And so before criticizing UNHCR it is worth considering the ICRS’s "principles under fire"9:
Neutrality should not be confused with confidentiality. The ICRC’s neutrality has a very specific purpose, namely to enable the organisation to gain the trust of all the parties to a conflict, whatever their stance, and thus to come to the aid of all the victims. … This is not the same thing as silence, or cowardice, or compromise. It is more difficult to say to a security minister that a country’s prisons are unsanitary, overcrowded and run by staff that torture inmates than to publish an article denouncing these facts in the press. …
Confidentiality, however, has limits. … In other words, the ICRC is fully aware that there are limits to persuasion and that public denunciation - the means of action favoured by organisations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International - can sometimes, albeit not always, be more effective. When the ICRC decides to take a public stand on violations of humanitarian law because its efforts at persuasion have been to no avail, it is not departing from the principle of neutrality but from the practice of confidentiality.
I have always had reservations about this, chiefly because I think that in a crisis, human beings working in large organisations will usually take the lowest risk path. That is, they will usually do what seems safest for the aid organization, not for the people who are in danger, and that usually means staying quiet too long.
But I must acknowledge that it does take a special kind of strength to try to work with a government that means to do wrong, and to try to soften the blow. While it can feel more morally satisfying for activists to put out principled press releases, it is important that someone keeps channels of communication open. For refugees, that someone is typically UNHCR, and looking back at the 10 years I spent working with refugees in the Middle East, I cannot imagine what we would have done if UNHCR had not played this role. I tend to agree with the critics that UNHCR is sometimes more cautious than it needs to be. UNHCR should see that many governments do seek out its praise and are angered by its criticism, when it comes. That’s good. It means that UNHCR has at least a little bit of power, and it should learn to use this. But these are tough calls to make, and critics should acknowledge as much. UNHCR’s public silence should not be automatically construed as endorsement.
The challenge is bigger than camps
I wish that the 2009 policy had dispensed with the term "urban refugee" altogether, because it promotes a distracting focus on geographic location rather than human rights. The assumption is that there is a dichotomy between refugees who are forced en masse into refugee camps in rural areas, and those who live more independently in cities. But even the 1997 urban policy acknowledged that a refugee should have the same rights regardless of where that refugee chooses to live.
There is something extreme about refugee camps. As Verdirame and Pobjoy write, "The essence of a refugee camp is separation". When refugee camps are the assumed foundation of refugee policy, operational energy shifts toward logistics. How do we supply X amount of calories and Y quantity of shelter to Z location? But when one thinks about refugees outside of camps, living on their own, the focus shifts toward what refugees can do for themselves, and that highlights the importance of legal status and rights.
Verdirame is the scholarly authority on the ways in which refugee camps are anomalies10 in international law, places where whole pieces of territory are de facto governed by international aid agencies instead of sovereign governments.
Legal separation is especially visible when refugees are confined in remote places. But not all refugee camps are isolated geographically. Many Palestinian camps in the Middle East are in the middle of cities. Not all refugees who are in camps are confined. Nor does leaving a camp ensure integration.
Legal separation can occur even when refugees are free to live wherever they want, if they are denied the right to work, if their kids cannot go to school, if local authorities will not recognize their marriages and divorces, or provide them routine police protection. It’s usually host governments, not UNHCR, that impose this separation on refugees.
As I have explained more extensively elsewhere11 (borrowing heavily from the work of Jeff Crisp of UNHCR’s Policy Development and Evaluation Service), host governments in the global south have strong incentives to marginalize refugees. Sometimes they to do this geographically, by confining refugees to camps (see: East Africa). Sometimes they tend to do this through more invisible legal restrictions (see: Middle East). But what happens in both scenarios is similar. The refugees are rendered more vulnerable and more dependent, while UNHCR becomes a "surrogate state."
Critics of UNHCR often gloss over the power of local politics in promoting refugee separation. For instance, Verdirame and Pobjoy state broadly that host governments don’t like UNHCR offering parallel services to refugees rather than integrating refugees with locals. Maybe that is true of some countries. But I have my doubts. If a host government didn’t want UNHCR to run parallel services for refugees, why did they let UNHCR do it? There are many governments that insist on separate services for refugees that refuse to let refugee kids enroll in local schools, that will not discuss including refugees in national development plans, and that will not allow refugees to seek employment. (Examples: Tanzania, Egypt, Lebanon). One of the main goals of the 2009 policy is to re-focus on host state responsibility. But why should we think that local governments will be willing to open their schools, their medical clinics, their employment markets, and their housing supply to refugees, especially in a climate of xenophobia or economic distress? Isn’t it easier for a host government to say, "Refugees are an international responsibility?"
It would indeed be easier if all of the blame for refugee separation belonged to UNHCR. Then UNHCR could fix it. But in reality UNHCR must adapt to the political realities in countries where host governments are simply unwilling to take responsibility for refugee protection or to let refugees integrate with their citizens. The new urban policy doesn’t clearly tell a UNHCR office what to do if a host government refuses to take responsibility for refugee rights, and that is a major weakness.
UNHCR’s greatest immediate potential is to expand refugee autonomy and dignity without dismantling the UNHCR surrogate state, finding new ways to deliver aid and focusing new attention on legal status and individualised services. With many countries denying refugees the right to work and impeding their access to government services, UNHCR is focusing more on developing its own referral networks and experimenting with more creative ways to enhance refugee livelihoods. But such efforts will always represent a compromise with reality, because they still depend on UNHCR and continue a kind of refugee separation.
Half full, half empty, or has the water just started pouring?
So, are we really at the beginning of a new era for refugee policy? Consider the case of Kenya again, where Haysom12 criticized UNHCR for its willingness to participate in proposed refugee relocation. Just last month, a Kenyan court blocked a plan13 to force tens of thousands of refugees in Nairobi into camps. It is disturbing that in 2013 a government would want to do this, and that does not bode well for the goals of the new urban policy. But it is also encouraging that a court said no. That could just be a fleeting victory. Or it could be a foundation for the future. UNHCR’s amicus curiae submission14 in the Kenyan case is also an important development; it advances an analysis of freedom of movement that is far closer to Verdirame and Pobjoy’s position than to the 2009 Policy (italicised added in subsequent online comment).
What struck me most in UNHCR’s 2012 Global Survey of the implementation of its new urban policy15 is that it kept returning to the issue of legal barriers and legal status. I cannot recall a UNHCR report that places such a strong emphasis on law in the global south. Such concerns have always been a focus of UNHCR’s work in Europe, North America and Australia. But in the global south, in the past at least, UNHCR tended to talk in more operational terms. It may be tedious, but there are literally dozens of references to legal issues throughout the report - the challenges of legal barriers, the difficulties of determining legal status, the importance of legal aid and legal networking. This focus on law is new.
Yes, there are grounds for criticism. We do not know if UNHCR’s growing attention to legal obstacles to refugee livelihoods will translate into expanded refugee rights in practice. We do not know if UNHCR will focus as clearly on legal issues when reviewing its own policies. I can’t help but note that on refugee status determination by UNHCR, the 2012 Global Survey stressed backlogs and resources. In other words, the report stressed the logistical side of mandate RSD. But the report made little mention of the unfinished work of bringing greater fairness to the process - the legal rights at stake.
But UNHCR decided in 2009 to endorse an essentially rights-based approach to refugee assistance. It decided that good refugee protection takes refugees where you find them, rather than telling them where they have to go. UNHCR decided to put this document out in a high profile way knowing full well that the situation on the ground wouldn’t measure up. It is not yet a success. But it is a very good start.
Syrian refugees register at the UNHCR helpdesk In Cairo, Egypt
By Jeff Crisp
Jeff Crisp is former Head of Policy Development and Evaluation, UNHCR, and has been recently appointed as Senior Director for Policy and Advocacy, Refugees International.
Posted whilst on UNHCR staff in response to the online blog (14th August, 2013)
As principal drafter of UNHCR’s 2009 urban refugee policy, I was pleased to see Mike Kagan’s essay on this subject, which provides a welcome corrective to the simplistic critiques offered by the other authors cited in his article.
The full story of the way in which UNHCR’s urban refugee policy has been formulated and implemented is told in a PowerPoint presentation which I gave in Oxford last December. I am happy to send a copy to anyone who wants to see it.
With respect to another issue raised by Mike, UNHCR is very much aware of the need to develop a broader policy on "out of camp" refugees, rather than focusing solely on urban contexts. This re-thinking process started with the Ivoirian influx into Liberia in 2011 (when many refugees preferred to stay with host communities rather than moving to a camp) and has of course been strengthened by the current Syrian refugee crisis. See our recent evaluation of UNHCR’s Syrian emergency operation which includes the paragraphs cited below.
"While international attention and resources have been largely directed at camps in Jordan and Northern Iraq, over 60 per cent of the Syrian refugee population in the region live outside camps. Their locations are diverse, spanning major cities, provincial towns, peri-urban and rural settings. The out-of-camp refugees are also confronted with a range of shelter conditions and differing access to services and livelihoods opportunities. Most live in precarious conditions and are vulnerable to a number of protection risks and socio-economic pressures. Ensuring timely registration, outreach and access to services for such a vast and geographically dispersed refugee population has been particularly challenging.
While there have been mounting efforts by UNHCR and its partners to support refugees living outside camps, there is a need to significantly boost the humanitarian community’s outreach to non-camp refugees, to strengthen mass information activities, to ensure refugee access to public services and to expand international support to public services in host countries. Many interviewees recognized that there remains a need to develop appropriate tools and capacity, both within UNHCR and the broader humanitarian community, to respond to emergencies in urban and out-of-camp settings."
The online exchange has continued online and can be viewed at: http://urban-refugees.org/debate/
Plans for a special edition of Field Exchange on the Syria crisis are outlined by ENN in this edition.
1http://urban-refugees.org/debate/
2See news piece about the debate forum in this issue of Field Exchange, http://urban-refugees.org
3UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas, September 2009, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4ab8e7f72.html [accessed 3 September 2013]. A short summary of the UNHCR 2009 policy is included on page X.
4The End of Refugee Camps? Guglielmo Verdirame & Jason M Pobjoy. August 2013. Legal Studies Research paper Series. PAPER NO. 29/2013. Access at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2297741
5http://www.odi.org.uk/opinion/7538-world-refugee-daykenya-nairobi-refugee
6http://urban-refugees.org/debate/unhcr-reviews-urbanpolicy-air-complacency/#more-75
7See footnote 1
8See footnote 3
9http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5vueea.htm
10The UN and Human Rights. Who Guards the Guardians? Guglielmo Verdirame. August 2013
11New issues in refugee research. "We live in a country of UNHCR". The UN surrogate state and refugee policy in the Middle East. Michael Kagan. Research Paper No. 201. August 2011. http://www.unhcr.org/4d5a8cde9.html
12See footnote 3
13See full text of case at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/PETITION% 20115%20AND%2019%20OF%202013%20JUDGMENT(FINAL).pdf
14UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Brief of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1st Amicus Curiae), in the matter of the contravention of fundamental rights and freedoms under Articles 2, 3, 10, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 36, 39 and 259, of the Constitution of the Republic of Kenya 2010, and in the matter of Articles 22, 23 and 258 of the Constitution of the Republic of Kenya 2010 and in the matter of the Refugees Act and in the matter of the intention of the Government of Kenya to move all refugees residing in urban areas to the Dadaab and Kakuma Refugee Camps with effect from 21.01.2013, in the High Court of Kenya at Nairobi, Constitutional and Human Rights Division, Petition No. 115 of 2013, 12 March 2013, available at: http://www.refworld.org/ docid/5151b5962.html [accessed 3 September 2013]
15The Implementation of UNHCR’s Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas - Global Survey - 2012. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/516d658c9.pdf and summarised in this edition of Field Exchange (46).
Imported from FEX website