“Restuctured Safe Havens: a Proposal for Reform of the Refugee Protection System,”

by Ahilan T. Arulanantham
Human Rights Quarterly,
[Vol.22, No.1, pp.1-56, February, 2000]
Link to Full Text

Arulanantham’s discussion of international refugee policy in general and safe havens in particular is welcome, particularly because he gives concrete and detailed recommendations for change in the current system. Arulanantham’s motivation for writing the article began with his exposure to Sri Lankan refugees in India, but his analysis is at a global level and he prescribes global solutions.

The current system for handling refugees was set up after WWII to handle individuals fleeing to the NATO countries from communist ones and has had trouble handling cases of mass influx as a result of ‘oppression by governments engaged in rampant human rights violation,’ where the political benefit to the receiving countries is not so obvious, and gives substantially more protection to those that cross international borders than to those who are internally displaced. As the volume of refugees has increased the richer countries are becoming ever more desperate to keep these influxes outside their borders. These are the same countries that fund the UNHCR, which creates a conflict of interest for the UNHCR, which is torn between its mandate to protect refugees and the demands of its donors.

One solution, which has been tried in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and elsewhere, is safe havens within the country the refugees would flee from. Sri Lanka is paradigmatic of problems with these safe havens and shows the ‘type of situation that strains refugee law to the breaking point.’ Arulanantham “had come upon a situation in which the UNHCR had created a camp designed to protect internally displaced people within their home state. People did not leave Sri Lanka (and, in some cases, returned to Sri Lanka from India) in part because they believed the UNHCR would provide protection. When that protection failed, however, the UNHCR was not willing to publicly report it in a way that would ensure the recognition of those refugees’ asylum claims abroad, even while UNHCR officials willingly acknowledged that failure to the refugees themselves.”

After critiquing the strengths and weaknesses of other proposals to reform our mechanisms for taking care of refugees, especially the ‘burden-sharing’ proposals of Hathaway and Neve and of Schuck, Arulanantham proposes his own reforms. His suggestions are based on three criteria:

“Reforms must give states a self-interested reason to participate in the system. In doing so, reforms must utilize and, where possible, strengthen the existing norm against non-refoulement. Furthermore, no system can be evaluated without considering how it will effect the incentives of refugee-receiving states to pressure states that commit widespread human rights violations...The system involves a new model for implementing and protecting safe havens whenever they are necessary. Support for the system is generated by restructuring the information network governing reporting on safe havens, which I believe represents the key to changing the whole structure. In its simplest form, the restructuring involves creating a separate organization whose only function is to report on refugee protection issues during situations of massive displacement. UNHCR will no longer be responsible for reporting on its own protection efforts during mass influx situations (including, most importantly, protection issues in safe havens.”

The whole article is closely argued and a solid contribution and the sangam is proud to have a member who can produce such high quality work, both at a theoretical and a practical level. In fact, the beauty of Arulanantham’s proposal is that its implementation is entirely within the realm of possibility.

By grounding his proposal in Sri Lanka, however, Arulanantham must be fully aware of the limits of the power of information alone to effect action to benefit those who are powerless, notably refugees. To begin with, the Sri Lankan government is a master at preventing information flow from the areas of conflict. Even when information is available, there seems to be too little incentive for action to improve the human rights situation of refugees or residents without the involvement of some big power.

India has recently reawakened to the issue of Sri Lanka in general and Sri Lankan refugees in particular. In addition, Sri Lanka is being somewhat less adamant that the conflict is an internal matter. So much interest has been generated by this and by the recent fighting that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogato,is once again making note that Sri Lanka has a refugee problem. A good portion of the heat has been generated by the possibility of more Sri Lankan Tamils fleeing to India. With both the Sri Lankan and the Indian navies patrolling to prevent these poor souls from escaping, it is easy to see why there has not been a massive exodus. And with absolutely no access for relief supplies to the area of fighting without the assistance of the Indian Navy, Ogato can do little except urge all sides to respect the rights of civilians.