Red Rag

Commenting on my support of asylum seekers who refuse to be repatriated to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, Ken Parish challenged me to reconsider my position. My gut instinct was to oppose forced repatriation, but I must admit I was expressing half-formed opinions at the time. I mentioned that I would do some reading on repatriation.

Which leads me to BS Chimni’s “From resettlement to involuntary repatriation: towards a critical history of durable solutions to refugee problems” (pdf), from the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, which canvasses the different “solutions” to the refugee problem sought by the international community in the decades since the Second World War.

It is interesting to note that international opinion on the issue has hardened in line with Australian policy. From WW2, resettlement was promoted. From the early 80s, “voluntary repatriation” was acceptable. In 1993 (about the time mandatory detention was implemented), the notion of “safe return” was proposed to allow involuntary repatriation in some circumstances. 1996 (when Howard took over and the crackdown on boat people started) brought the doctrine of forced repatriation — something that the UN only reluctantly accepts: “As one UNHCR publication bluntly puts it: ‘it is quite clear that a large proportion of the world’s recent returnees have repatriated under some form of duress’.”

There was a time, according to Chimni, when paying refugees to leave was considered inappropriate, as it impinged on their freedom:

In so far as the Northern States accepted the solution of repatriation as the ideal solution in principle, they strongly supported freedom of choice even though 1,000,000 refugees were involved. So much so that even the decision to provide three months of rations to refugees deciding to repatriate was sharply criticized.

The Government’s $2000 offer to encourage refugees to return to an Afghanistan suffering from a war and the return of over a million refugees would have be seen as wrong. Indeed, I still have reservations about paying people to return to dangerous conditions.

When by the 1990s voluntary repatriation had become the accepted norm, Chimni contends it was based solely on the politics of the host States. Whereas resettlement was desirable to fill the labour void that followed the war, when refugees from Africa began to reach Europe in later periods, the global North wanted nothing to do with it: “since there was at present no shortage of labour, it was time to rethink the solution of resettlement”. It had nothing to do with the needs of refugees.

On the contrary, from the very beginning scholars such as Harrell-Bond warned that “there are no published research data which could be used to test the assumptions which govern current policies and practices of governments and international agencies”. Subsequently, other researchers noted that “what is being promoted as the most desirable solution to refugee crises is a poorly understood social and spatial phenomenon”. However, the advocates of voluntary repatriation simply assumed that all refugees desired to go home. It was not seen as a “hypothesis to be tested”, but as a statement of fact which presumed knowledge of refugees.

Those who undertook the more difficult task of testing the hypothesis discovered, however, that there were a number of situations in which refugees did not want to go home.

These reasons, ranging from refugees considering the host country (rather than the country of origin) as “home”, to the country of origin being a “home” to which less-than-fond memories are attached, were ignored: “the tendency to generalize ‘the refugee experience’, particularly as an expression of loss, did not subside.”

I must admit that I’m guilty of this sin — it’s far more romantic to see refugees as people who seek temporary shelter until they can return and rebuild their homeland as a happy, peaceful place. The reality is that if you flee one country in fear, then begin to build a life elsewhere, you probably won’t want to go back. It’s human nature, and I think it’s fair enough. Still, the former view is widely accepted. Why?

The simplest explanation for this is that an idealized image of return helped legitimize measures which compelled refugees to return. Furthermore, once this image was captured and set out in legal terms it tended to occlude the consideration of alternative solutions as being beside the point. For example, in her recent book on the legal aspects of voluntary repatriation Zieck states categorically: “Although it is often assumed that everyone wants to return to the country of origin, i.e. ‘home’, no attempt will be made to assess the validity of the assumption since it appears, in the absence of other options, to be largely irrelevant.”

Once you’ve accepted that a generic “I want to go home” opinion is held by refugees, it allows the host State to make up their collective mind for them. That’s essentially how the principle of “safe return” originated: the host State would decide when the place of origin was safe enough, and then refugees would be expelled — because everyone wants to go home, right? Whether they realise it or not.

Chimni takes issue with this on the grounds that it is designed more than anything to weaken the position of the refugee. By handing the sole right to interpret the facts surrounding a claim to the State, the refugee is disenfranchised and placed at the mercy of the State. Chimni argues that a reliance solely on objective facts (and the consequent marginalisation of subjective factors) offers the legal basis for such disenfranchisement:

Objectivism, in my view, disenfranchises the refugee through eliminating his or her voice in the process leading to the decision to deny or terminate protection. Lyotard has termed such objectivism an ethical tort; it has been described as “an extreme form of injustice in which the injury suffered by the victim is accompanied by a deprivation of the means to prove it”. Objectivism is sustained on the mistaken view that there are facts out there waiting to be discovered in order to arrive at a just decision with respect to the denial or termination of protection. Unfortunately, however, facts do not exist outside the world of interpretation. Therefore, most often, what objectivism tends to do is to substitute the subjective perceptions of the State authorities for the experience of the refugee. Its injustice relates above all to the fact that “all traces of particularity and otherness are reduced to a register of sameness and cognition”, whereas fear, pain and death are “radically singular; they resist and at the limit destroy language and its ability to construct shared worlds”.

In other words, this supposed “objective” judgment is no more than the subjective judgment of the State. The subjective judgment of the refugee is ignored altogether. Sometimes, this differential treatment becomes stark:

Is it not strange that whereas the element of subjectivity is celebrated when it translates into the spontaneous return of the refugee, it is ignored when it involves a decision to stay. In this scheme of things, refugees are rational actors when they decide to return but are moved by extraneous motives if they decide to stay? … This “heads I win and tails you lose” logic needs to be squarely rejected.

We can see this logic played out in Australia: if an asylum seeker is initially rejected but appeals the decision, they are portrayed as cheaters and accused of “manipulating the system” in order to “achieve migration outcomes”. On the other hand, if an initial decision is made in favour of the refugee, the Minister is more than justified in appealing it. The idea is to completely deny fundamental rights to people in desperate need of help.

Perhaps most damning in terms of Australia’s acceptance of involuntary return is the fact that the doctrine was developed to cope with the reality experienced by poor nations in Africa and the Middle East:

Finally, as McNamara pointed out in his Washington presentation, “imposed return has become necessary because of pressure from host states and a lack of money to care for refugees”. I would like to suggest this indeed is the real reason why involuntary repatriation is coming to be so widely discussed and practised in the Third World. The pressure from the host states is increasing because they are most often extremely poor countries and are confronted with a situation in which Northern states are unwilling to actualize the principle of burden sharing. The absence of burden sharing is manifested, it needs to be emphasized, both at the level of asylum and at the level of resources. The regime which the Northern states have constructed to prevent refugees from reaching their shores, and the unseemly hurry to return refugees from former Yugoslavia, has taken away their moral authority to protest at involuntary repatriation when this takes place in the South. On the other hand, the unwillingness of the North to share the burden of the poor host states at the level of resources has meant that the “refugees must either repatriate or become the sole responsibility of the host state”.

Take the case of Zaire and Tanzania which gave asylum to 2,500,000 Rwandan refugees in 1994. They are among the poorest countries in the world with a ranking according to the United Nations Development Programme human development index (HDI) of 142 and 149 out of 179 respectively. Given the absence of burden sharing and the economic crises which afflict the two countries, the decision of Tanzania, for example, to abandon its open door policy has been correctly characterized as being “unfortunate but understandable”. Tanzania, as has been pointed out, “survives on loans from the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund], whose conditions include charging the public for every service, including health care and education, and removal of government subsidies on basic amenities. It is unrealistic to expect a country in such a desperate state to be generous to refugees”, in particular if the rich states have behaved no differently in the recent past and refuse to share the burden of the poor host state. The situation is not unique to Tanzania. Several other host countries which offer refuge to thousands and thousands of refugees are among the poorest in the world including, for instance, Guinea (HDI ranking 167), Uganda (HDI ranking 159), Sudan (HDI ranking 158), Nepal (HDI ranking 154), Bangladesh (HDI ranking 144), and Pakistan (HDI ranking 139).

Contrast that with a situation in which Australia is “burdened” with 12 000 or less refugees per year, despite vast economic resources.

Of course all this does not mean that we need to accept morally offensive notions of burden sharing which would have Northern states pay for the care of refugees in exchange for being refugee free states. Such a proposal seeks to mock at the poverty of the Southern states. It is not realism but arrogance and a certain moral insensitivity which dictates such solutions.

In that case, the arrogance of Australia’s Pacific Solution is supreme. Not content with helping out the developing nations who bear the brunt of the global refugee problem, we offload our own meagre problem to our poor neighbours.

Chimni’s conclusion is compelling:

It has been my contention in this paper that the dominant states in the international system decide from time to time, in the light of their interests, which solution to the global refugee problem should be promoted as the preferred solution. Today, involuntary repatriation is coming to be pursued as a solution to the refugee problem because in the post Cold War era the rich Northern states see no reason to share the burden of the poor South at both the level of asylum and resources. Involuntary repatriation may thus be described as the favoured solution of the Northern states in the era of globalization which is marked by the end of the Cold War and a growing North-South divide.

In other words, Australia’s reaction to asylum seekers and refugees bears little relation to the needs of those people, or to humanitarian principles. It is motivated solely by selfish and often brutal “realism”. It is reflected in the fact that 4000 boat people can be portrayed as a national crisis and an attack on our sovereignty. It is reflected in the fact that “We decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” was an election-winning slogan, rather than “We should help people fleeing oppressive regimes.”

The justification for expelling Iranian or Iraqi asylum seekers against their will is part of the school of thought that justifies the forced expulsion of Kosovar or East Timorese refugees. It is our sentimental attachment to the latter and our collective disdain for the former that allows public opinion to be so divided on the issue. If an East Timorese asylum seeker set fire to a detention centre in response to his forced expulsion, how would the community react? There are few things that Iran and Iraq get right, especially in terms of human rights. But I believe their refusal to countenance the involuntary repatriation of asylum seekers and refugees is the principled stance on humanitarian grounds. If only we would learn from them on this, and they would learn from us on everything else…