Access to safety? Negotiating protection in a Central Asian emergency

The paper is structured around the three phases of the emergency: escape, asylum and
repatriation. Each section summarizes the events related to the relevant phase, and
then analyses a set of issues raised by those events and the responses to them. The
first, escape, focuses on the protection needs of the Afghans, and the role of access —
access by the refugees to refuge, and by the international community to the refugees.
The second, asylum, concentrates on the threats to the refugees’ protection, host
country concerns and UNHCR’s strategy for minimizing the threats — its attempt to
negotiate protection for this group. Repatriation, the third section, reflects upon the
limits of outsiders in the face of ‘spontaneous’ repatriation. It looks at the international
norms surrounding repatriation, voluntary and involuntary, and suggests that the scope
for action may be restricted in such situations. Finally, the conclusion recapitulates the
arguments made in the paper, and ends with a brief look at some of the operation’s
implications.