Refugee Resettlement

Refugee resettlement occurs when those who have fled their country of origin and taken refuge in a country of first asylum, often a neighboring state, are then resettled in a third country that agrees to give them permanent resident status. Refugee resettlement is an important way to ensure burden sharing between countries of first asylum, which are often poor and inundated with refugees from surrounding conflict areas, and developed countries, whose geographic isolation has historically protected them from large influxes of refugees. For resettlement countries, refugee resettlement has also served as both a migration policy in disguise, satisfying domestic employment needs, and, particularly during the Cold War, as a foreign policy tool to advance political goals.

Countries with well-established resettlement programs include traditional immigration countries such as Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom plus the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. As the number of refugees seeking resettlement has increased, the list of resettlement countries has grown to include Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. Millions of refugees have been resettled since 1945. The United States alone has resettled more than one million refugees, more than all other resettlement countries combined. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees coordinates the system by which countries choose which refugees to accept for resettlement. Factors such as country of origin, gender, age, education level, and urgency of the individual situation are taken into account in the application process, which often spans several years. Although the 1951 Refugee Convention requires that signatories obey the principle of nonrefoulement, which protects refugees from return once they arrive, countries have no international legal obligations to resettle refugees. Therefore, political motivations, which may or may not coincide with the needs of the refugees themselves, play heavily into resettlement policies.

However, resettlement plays a critical role in refugee protection. Countries of first asylum are confronted with three possible durable, or permanent, solutions to refugee situations: local integration, repatriation, and resettlement to a third country. Local integration, in which refugees are allowed to resettle permanently in local communities, often remains impractical because the sheer number of refugees would lead to a country's political or economic instability. Repatriation is often not a viable solution, because the human rights situation in countries of origin may remain bad for many years.

Instead, refugees are often warehoused in border camps, unable to return home and yet not permitted to start lives in their host countries. In addition to failing to protect the human rights of refugees, long-term warehousing creates other problems for countries of first asylum. Refugee camps, which sometimes provide cover for paramilitary groups operating across borders, can become security risks for countries of first asylum and may increase regional instability, creating further refugee flows. Resettlement evolved in response to such situations and is usually seen as a last resort if the other two durable solutions appear untenable.

The international refugee system, with its focus on nonrefoulement, was designed to protect the kind of refugee who emerged from the Cold War—those fleeing oppressive Communist regimes. In this environment, repatriation was not considered a possibility, and because the numbers of people arriving were low, resettlement posed no substantial burden to Western countries. The Vietnam War, which displaced millions of people, was the first time that resettlement occurred on a massive scale. The 1989 Indochinese Comprehensive Plan of Action provided for the resettlement of 700,000 refugees, mostly to the United States, whose complicity in the conflict provided the domestic impetus for the agreement.

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