Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right and is central to the functioning of the international refugee protection regime. The very ability to seek asylum depends on the ability to move in search of rights that have been denied in the country of origin. In a broader sense, it is now increasingly recognised that human mobility provides an important means for people to improve their standard of living and to contribute to the economic and social life of their countries of origin and destination.
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Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right and is central to the functioning of the international refugee protection regime. The very ability to seek asylum depends on the ability to move in search of rights that have been denied in the country of origin. In a broader sense, it is now increasingly recognised that human mobility provides an important means for people to improve their standard of living and to contribute to the economic and social life of their countries of origin and destination. Despite a growing recognition of this, however, the international community has been slow to incorporate mobility into its responses to forced migration. Solutions to displacement have focused on containing or reversing movement, rather than on restoring the lost rights which prompted flight in the first place.[1]<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n For most of its 60 years, UNHCR stuck firmly to the belief that \u2018there is no place like home\u2019. Even in the Cold War years \u2013 when refugee repatriation was relatively rare \u2013 resettlement and local integration programmes were projected as the making of new, permanent \u2018homes\u2019. Those refugees unable to access these solutions were frequently encamped in what often became protracted refugee situations, their freedom of movement severely restricted by host states who awaited their eventual \u2018return home\u2019. However, the last three years have seen a significant shift in thinking and UNHCR now believes that the protection and enhancement of refugees\u2019 mobility may in fact offer a means of ensuring their enduring access to meaningful rights and sustainable livelihoods.<\/p>\n UNHCR\u2019s changing attitude to mobility can be explained by a number of factors. There is a growing body of academic research indicating that forced migrants\u2019 return home is frequently neither possible nor desirable, and that transnational diasporic community networks can contribute positively to the de facto protection of refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs and other persons of concern to UNHCR. The difficulties encountered in finding sustainable solutions to protracted refugee situations have also influenced the development of new policies. <\/p>\n A sedentarist approach to forced migration crises does not reflect the reality of refugees\u2019 decision-making processes or provide forced migrants with an adequate choice of livelihood strategies. Nor are anti-mobility strategies able to offer a serious answer to the increasingly complex challenges faced by those seeking to provide effective international protection to those in need. These challenges \u2013 which include mixed migration flows, the onward movements of refugees and asylum seekers, the growth in human smuggling and trafficking operations, and the increasing urban self-settlement of refugees \u2013 are all symptomatic of a serious imbalance between international responses to forced displacement and the socio-economic protection needs of those who are displaced. These protection gaps will not be bridged by attempts at more effective population containment but instead require more effective protection of forced migrants\u2019 rights to move freely.<\/p>\n Enhancing refugees\u2019 mobility is now recognised as a key factor in both understanding and addressing refugee movements from camps to cities. Protecting mobility is also seen as a key part of combating the human rights violations that frequently occur as a result of irregular or secondary movements from the first country of asylum, often in search of effective protection. And increasingly mobility is also seen as offering a possible solution to refugees\u2019 displacement in itself, through the use of regularised international labour migration channels and the strengthening of refugees\u2019 and IDPs\u2019 prospects for post-return mobility. Refugees from Kenya\u2019s Kakuma and Dadaab camps, for example, face restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to local labour markets. With no durable solution to their situation in prospect, significant numbers have found their own \u2018solution\u2019 by self-settling in Nairobi \u2013 but because this escape from aid-dependency is often illegal under the laws of the host states, greater socio-economic independence often comes at the price of loss of international protection.<\/p>\n UNHCR\u2019s new urban refuge policy, published in September 2009, reflects the need for protection strategies that work with, rather than against, refugee mobility.[2]<\/u><\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Similar changes can be seen in UNHCR\u2019s response to continued concerns over onward movements of refugees and asylum seekers from first countries of asylum. Although recognising states\u2019 political and security concerns regarding the irregularity of many such movements, UNHCR now insists that \u2018effective protection\u2019 in a country of first asylum must include access to adequate and dignified means of subsistence, and that failure to ensure this is a justification for continued movement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Improving access to protection<\/strong><\/p>\n Given this recognition that refugees\u2019 onward movement is defensible in at least some cases, the challenge is to provide better access to protection within processes of onward movement and mixed migrations. From this perspective, human smuggling and human trafficking networks need to be tackled not in order to secure states\u2019 borders but in order to better protect their clients\u2019 and victims\u2019 human rights.<\/p>\n People with protection needs will move \u2013 and should be able to move \u2013 in order to find effective protection. This principle is central to the very concept of the international refugee regime. This helps to explain why UNHCR has become increasingly interested since 2006 in the possibilities offered by promoting regularised labour migration as a solution to refugee exile, particularly in terms of meeting socio-economic needs. UNHCR\u2019s 2007 10-Point Plan for providing refugee protection in mixed migration flows suggests that:<\/p>\n There will be circumstances where people who do not meet the criteria for refugee status may nevertheless be in a position to access alternative temporary migration options. These could variously allow them to stay legally in the country of arrival, or to move to a third country for humanitarian reasons, or for the purposes of work, education or family reunion. Efforts to address mixed population movements should also explore a place for regular migration options, temporary or even longer term…<\/em>[3]<\/u><\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Regularised labour migration may also play an important role in addressing the needs of protracted or residual refugee populations unable to access the three traditional durable solutions of repatriation, resettlement or local integration:<\/p>\n Refugees in such situations could perhaps be admitted to the migrant worker and immigration programmes maintained by states that are unable to meet their own labour market needs. Many of these programmes, it should be noted, also offer opportunities for long-term residence and naturalisation, and thus offer the prospect of a durable solution as well as an interim one<\/em>.[4]<\/u><\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n These ideas are not only being developed at a policy level but are also being implemented in practice. In West Africa, the free movement protocols agreed upon by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are now being used to provide residual refugee populations from ECOWAS states with both greater socio-economic mobility and increased political security.[5]<\/u><\/a> In 2009, Nigeria issued residual refugee populations from Sierra Leone and Liberia with three-year ECOWAS residence permits, alongside the re-issuing of passports from Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the government of Sierra Leone has recently offered some 5,600 passports to former refugees wishing to integrate locally in their host countries.<\/p>\n As the ECOWAS case shows, durable solutions for refugees must, in some way, involve the regaining of meaningful citizenship, which is not necessarily connected to accepting more mobility. Yet it is equally clear that in many cases, fragile states emerging from conflict cannot provide returning refugees with a sustainable socio-economic livelihood or access to meaningful political rights. UNHCR has begun to explore how repatriation could be linked to greater encouragement of post-return mobility, most prominently in its work on the 2003 Afghan Comprehensive Solutions Framework, which \u2013 although hampered by significant state security interests \u2013 argued for the need for an integrated long-term \u2018migration and development\u2019’ approach to Afghan population flows.<\/p>\n The value of internal post-repatriation mobility is also increasingly recognised. UNHCR\u2019s current return and reintegration policy is explicit in rejecting the idea that successful returns to refugees\u2019 countries of origin require refugees to return to their pre-displacement lives:<\/p>\n Reintegration does not consist of \u2018anchoring\u2019 or \u2018re-rooting\u2019 returnees in either their places of origin or their previous social and economic roles. For example, refugees and IDPs who have experienced urban or semi-urban lifestyles during their period of displacement may well move to towns and cities upon their return. Such forms of mobility should only be regarded as a failure of the reintegration process if returnees are unable to establish new livelihoods or benefit from the rule of law in their areas of origin, and thus feel that they have no choice but to settle in alternative locations<\/em>.[6]<\/u><\/sup><\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n In embracing mobility as a potential tool of protection, UNHCR is shifting towards a rights-based approach to displacement, acknowledging that it is refugees\u2019 inability to access their human rights \u2013 rather than their physical exile, which is only a symptom of the loss of such rights \u2013 which should be the focus of international protection efforts. Meanwhile, however, states continue to impede the movement of both refugees and migrants across international borders. Increasing concern with border securitisation, the impact of global economic recession and rising domestic xenophobia have created a political cauldron of intolerance in both the North and the South. Asylum and migration space is shrinking: states perceive no immediate political advantages in allowing refugees’ greater freedom of movement.<\/p>\n This means that the real challenge in the coming years \u2013 for researchers, UNHCR and refugees themselves \u2013 will be how to persuade reluctant states that acknowledging and protecting the mobility of refugees may in fact help to \u2018solve\u2019’ twenty-first century displacement crises more effectively than insisting on return \u2018home\u2019. Collaborative research on this topic will be vital if we are not only to turn research findings into UNHCR policies but to turn such policies into practice, with the ultimate aim of securing the most effective protection possible for all refugees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Katy Long (katylong@gmail.com<\/u><\/a>) is currently working at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, and is a consultant to UNHCR\u2019s Policy Development & Evaluation Service (PDES). Jeff Crisp (crisp@unhcr.org<\/u><\/a>) is Head of PDES (http:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/pdes\/<\/u><\/a>).<\/p>\n [1]<\/span><\/u><\/a> This article is written in response to Giulia Scalettaris’ article on \u2018Refugees and mobility\u2019 (published in FMR 33) in which she concluded that UNHCR still retained an anti-mobility policy bias.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/span><\/u><\/a> UNHCR policy on refugee protection and solutions in urban areas.<\/em> September 2009, http:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/4ab356ab6.pdf <\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/span><\/u><\/a> UNHCR, Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration: a 10-Point Plan of Action,<\/em> January 2007, http:\/\/www.unhcr.org\/refworld\/pdfid\/45b0c09b2.pdf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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