There can be few more difficult and complex decisions for refugees than if and when to return home after a long period in exile. When such a decision is taken, however, refugees should be supported to ensure that they are…
Displaced people may return home after long periods of absence despite the presence of hostile local authorities and opposition from new occupants or settlers in their old homes. What underlies these difficult decisions? Studying cases of successful voluntary return might…
The requirement for voluntary repatriation to be conducted ‘with dignity’ has appeared consistently in humanitarian policies and guidelines since the late 1980s. The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement launched in 1998, for example, state that internally displaced persons (IDPs) should…
Ethnic minority groups, including the Chin, Shan and Karen, have been fleeing Myanmar since at least as early as 1988 because of severe oppression and persecution. Those fleeing had been subjected by the Burmese national military to forced labour, arbitrary…
In 1991, with the outbreak of civil war in Somalia, refugee camps were established around the small border town of Dadaab in north-eastern Kenya. Since then, Dadaab has become the location of one of the world’s largest and longest-standing protracted…
In early 2016, the conflict in Myanmar appeared to be in a state of transformation. The Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement was signed in October 2015 and the new government came into power in April 2016. The areas of return in the…
The signing of a Tripartite Agreement (TA) on voluntary repatriation is intended to signal an end to refugees’ long wait to return home. However, difficult questions surround what constitutes normality in the home country, and whether conditions have improved to…
An estimated 1.4 million Syrian refugees currently live in Jordan, of whom three quarters are calculated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to plan to return to Syria at some point in the future. Repatriation should be based on a free and…
Turkey’s initially welcoming approach when the first Syrian refugees began arriving in early 2011 was justified by the government as a temporary emergency response to a humanitarian crisis. From mid-2014, however, as the numbers continued to rise, and with no apparent end…
As the Assad regime regains control in most parts of Syria, Syrian refugees are under increasing pressure to return from neighbouring countries including Lebanon. Analysis of the complex political landscape and of current return practices, however, shows that much needs…