Back to where you once belonged: A historical review of UNHCR policy and practice on refugee repatriation

The paper begins by examining the principle of voluntariness and then provides a historical overview of the challenges that UNHCR has faced in translating that principle in practice. The next part of the paper considers the continued usefulness of the principle of voluntariness and asks whether safety is a more appropriate criteria on which to base UNHCR’s engagement in a repatriation operation. Finally, the paper examines how the cessation of refugee status is linked to policy and practice in relation to refugee repatriation. It ends by offering a number of conclusions on UNHCR’s engagement with the principles and practices of voluntary repatriation.
 

This paper is based on five years of general research into refugee repatriation at Cambridge and Oxford Universities,2 as well as targeted research carried out at the UNHCR archives in Geneva.34 The paper has also benefited from the input of Jeff Crisp, who commissioned this review on behalf of UNHCR’s Policy Development and Evaluation Service and who has written extensively on the issue of refugee repatriation.