Special Conference
Research Report: Refugees
BALMUN IX
Finding ways to equally distribute and fully integrate refugees, regardless of
their ethnic, religious or gender background
By Johannes Schmidt
Introduction
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the end
of 2014, there were 59.5 million people forcibly displaced world-wide, 19.5 million of them
were refugees and 14.4 million of the refugees were under the mandate of the UNHC R. In
2015, the number of forcibly displaced persons in the whole world is very likely to have
surpassed the sad record of 60 million people, making this the highest number ever. Refugees
are fleeing countries like Syria, worn down by a civil war that is now already going on for five
years, Iraq, Eritrea and many others because of wars, terror and persecution.
Syrian civilians, according to the Washington Post, are fleeing their home country
because it is simply too dangerous to stay there (57%), because the Assad government
occupied their towns (43%), because Assad’s military destroyed their homes (32%), because
they were threatened with violence if they did not leave (35%), because costs of finding food
and other necessities were just too high (32%) or because they were running out of money
(13%). These statistics are by no means complete, but they give a good overview on the
desperate situation the Syrian refugees are in, and they show why it is so important to support
them and to give them hope for a better life in their new homes.
Iraqis are fleeing their country since unrest began with the US American invasion of
2003, during which a total of 2 million people had fled Iraq and hundreds of thousand had
died. With the withdrawal of the American troops in 2011, conflicts between Sunni and Shia
Muslims as well as Arabs and Kurds broke out, forcing even more people to flee the country.
And finally, since 2014, the radical Sunni terrorist group and so-called Islamic State (IS),
which is in a serious conflict with the fundamentalist Shia government of Iraq, kills, persecutes
and drives out thousands of Christians, Yezidis and Muslims who do not agree with their
“interpretation,” which is more a perversion, of Islam.
Eritreans, living in one of the world’s most repressive dictatorships, under the rule of
President Isaias Afewerki, are fleeing a country in which one party holds all the power (the People’s
Front for Democracy and Justice), that never conducted free elections since its independence from
Ethiopia in 1993 and that has no real rule of law nor an independent judiciary. The people of Eritrea
are forced into indefinite military service or compelled to take up jobs in the administration or the
public services sector, regardless of their qualification, leading to no or very little hope in the future.
Additionally, many are treated as slave laborers, arrested without charge, held in concentration
camps and/ or tortured.
In 2014, the top five refugee hosting countries, based on the total number of refugees
officially being there, were Turkey with 1.59 million, Pakistan with 1.51 million, the Lebanon 1.15
million, the Islamic Republic of Iran with 982,000 and Ethiopia with 659,000 refugees. In 2015
though, other countries, especially in Europe, started admitting a lot of refugees. In that year,
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Germany, for example, took in more than one million refugees, with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel disregarding the EU Dublin Regulation in order to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Greece
and Hungary, when thousands of refugees were stranded in these countries and their administrations
not able to adequately handle the situation.
Key Terms
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Forcibly displaced person
o Refugee: According to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee “is
someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a
well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
o Asylum Seeker: Persons who “say they are refugees and have fled their homes as
refugees do, but their claim to refugee status is not yet definitively evaluated in the
country to which they fled.”
o Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs): “[P]eople who have not crossed an international
border but have moved to a different region than the one they call home within their
own country” are considered IDPs.
o Stateless Persons: A stateless person does not have a “recognized nationality and
do[es] not belong to any country.”
o Returnees: “[R]efugees who return to their own countries or regions of origin after
time in exile” are called returnees.
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Dublin III Regulation; previously Dublin II Regulation and Dublin Convention
o The Dublin III Regulation is a law of the European Union (EU) which determines
what EU member state is responsible to examine an asylum seeker’s application. This
member state usually is the country through which the refugee first entered the union.
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1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Geneva Convention)
o The 1951 Geneva Convention “is the key legal document in defining who is a
refugee, their rights and the legal obligations of states. The 1967 Protocol removed
geographical and temporal restrictions from the Convention.”
The three “durable solutions” for refugees
There are three possible ways of treating refugees and distributing them among member
states that are commonly referred to as the durable solutions for refugees.
The first durable solution is voluntary repatriation. This term refers to a voluntary returning
of a refugee to his or her home state. It is imperative that this return is happing on a voluntary basis
and is deemed safe by the refugee himself. If he or she feels like going back is not a secure
possibility (yet) and is nevertheless forced to do so, then this is called involuntary or forced
repatriation and can therefore not be considered a “durable” solution.
Local integration is the second process that can lead to durable solution. It has three
interrelated dimensions and is based on the assumption that refugees will remain indefinitely in
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country of asylum. First of all, it is a legal process, with the host state progressively extending the
range of rights and entitlements granted to the refugee. These range from the right to seek
employment over the right of access to public services, such as education; to many more. It may lead
to permanent residence and ultimately even to the acquisition of legal citizenship.
Second, it is an economic process, by which the refugee is enabled to improve his or
her potential to “establish a sustainable [a] livelihood[…], to attain a growing degree of self-reliance
and to become progressively less reliant on state aid or humanitarian assistance.”
Third and last, it is also a social process. It should allow the refugee to live in the host
country’s society without the fear of systematic discrimination, intimidation or exploitation.
Furthermore, the refugee should be allowed to maintain his or her own identity while becoming a
part of the host society. Even if he or she does not become a naturalized citizen of the host nation,
but reaches the other goals of integration previously explained, he or she attained a very real degree
of local integration.
Local integration should not be mistaken with local settlement. This is a strategy for dealing
with mass refugee movements. In this case, the host state gives the refugees land where they could
establish new settlements and engage in farming as well as other economic activities. The
international community is expected to support them, based on the assumption that they would
eventually attain self-sufficiency. In the case of local settlement, there is no presupposition that the
refugees find a durable solution in the country of asylum. They might find temporary security in the
host state and then, if the situation in the refugees’ home country allows for it, voluntarily repatriate.
Last but not least, the third durable solution is resettlement in a third country. In this case,
refugees are transferred “from an asylum country to another State that has agreed to admit them and
ultimately grant them permanent settlement.” Currently, only 28 member states participate in the
UNHCR’s resettlement program, with the United States of America being the world’s top
resettlement country. In fiscal year 2015, 69,933 refugees were resettled in the USA.
Discrimination against refugees
A very common form of discrimination against refugees is racist and xenophobic rhetoric.
Asylum seekers and migrants are hereby stereotyped as “criminals,” “job usurpers” and much worse,
solely based on their descent, their skin color or their religion. Some people even, directly or
indirectly, call for violence against refugees. Nationalist parties, but with an increasing number even
politicians of mainstream parties, use it for political mobilization purposes. For instance, US
American and European politicians publically called refugees “rabid dogs,” “swarms” and
“marauders.”
But racist rhetoric is not the only form of discrimination refugees often have to fear in their
host state. Public acts of xenophobic physical violence occur quite frequently. Not rarely, such acts
of violence are symbolic acts and do not always directly harm the physical well-being of refugees,
but they convey the message that the refugees are not welcome in the home state and should
constantly fear degradation, verbal abuse and physical harm. Examples for that are the recent and
numerous arsonist attacks on asylum seeker hostels in Germany. In these cases, “only” the hostels
burned down, but the arsonists deliberately risked injuring or even killing refugees and other people,
for example volunteers helping asylum seekers, that could possibly be in those houses.
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Discrimination against refugees does not only occur in such drastic and singular ways. The
management of migration employed by a state is often already discriminating. In many member
states, the national immigration policies are (partly) very restrictive. Even though it is a country’s
natural right to protect its border, those states basically accepting no people that seek asylum under
the 1951 Geneva Convention are, in a way, discriminating those refugees.
Adding to this is the practice of forcibly repatriating refugees, meaning to forcefully send
refugees back to their home countries against their will. In this case, the conditions in the home
countries are at least insecure, if not life-threatening. An example of this practice is the Mozambican
repatriation of the early 1990s. Some Mozambican refugees, such as those in South Africa, without
being given a choice, were sent back to Mozambique.
Possibilities of improving the integration of refugees
There are various concepts for improving the integration process of refugees. Primarily, the
civic engagement of civilians already living in the host society and the refugee’s will and ability to
swiftly adapt to the host country’s culture are decisive in defining the effectivity of a refugee’s
integration. As integration is a very ambiguous concept which’s success cannot be defined
objectively, delegates will have to think of various possible approaches when it comes to finding
realistic measures of improving refugees’ integration. A few basic concepts are explained in the
following:
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Governments can create more possibilities for joint civic commitment in order to encourage
local citizens and immigrants to volunteer in sports clubs, language courses, leisure programs
etc. and foster a community’s solidarity and social cohesion.
States should improve programs that aim at enhancing the immigrants’ skills and make them
available to as many of them as possible. Thereby, local institutions and businesses should
play an active role in helping the refugees, providing social, technical and intellectual skill
trainings as well as conflict management courses.
They can also create special programs aiming directly at supporting a certain group of people
among the refugees (i.e. women, juveniles etc.) in order to advance the refugees’ integration
process and help persons that might otherwise have an even harder time integrating into the
new society than other immigrants.
Bibliography
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Number of forcibly displaced persons world-wide:
http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-refugees-idUSKBN0U10CV20151218
Why are Syrians fleeing Syria:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/09/28/in-two-charts-this-iswhat-refugees-say-about-why-they-are-leaving-syria-now/
Why are Iraqis fleeing Iraq and Eritreans fleeing Eritrea:
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/syria-iraq-and-eritrea-why-people-are-fleeing1.2347795
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Research Report: Refugees
BALMUN IX
Top 5 refugee hosting nations in 2014:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/which-country-has-hosted-the-most-refugees-thiscentury/
Refugees in Germany:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/12043051/German-refugeeinflux-tops-one-million-in-2015.html
Who is a refugee:
http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html
Who is an asylum seeker, an IDP, a stateless person and a returnee:
http://www.un.org/en/events/refugeeday/background.shtml
Dublin III Regulation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation
1951 Geneva Convention:
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49da0e466.html
Local integration and local settlement:
http://www.unhcr.org/407d3b762.pdf
Settlement in a third country:
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a16b1676.html
Number of resettled refugees in the USA:
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/refugees-and-asylees-united-states
Discrimination against refugees in general:
https://www.hrw.org/legacy/campaigns/race/statement-genconc.htm
Examples of xenophobic rhetoric:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lindsay-stark/the-high-cost-of-refugee-_b_9017842.html
Forcibly repatriating refugees:
http://www.unhcr.org/3ae6a0c50.html
Mozambican repatriation of the early 1990s:
https://www.umanitoba.ca/institutes/disaster_research/refugee_thesis/chapter5.pdf
Joint civic commitment:
http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/Integrationsprojekte/Engagement/engagementnode.html
Skill enhancement programs:
http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/Integrationsprojekte/StaerkungVonKompetenzen/staer
kung-von-kompetenzen-node.html
Special programs:
http://www.bamf.de/EN/Willkommen/Integrationsprojekte/integrationsprojekte-node.html
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