Refugee Policy Amidst Global Shocks: Encampment, Resettlement Barriers and the Search for ‘Durable Solutions’

Samuel J. Spiegel and Johanne Mhlanga

Global Policy, 2022, vol. 13, issue 4, 427-441

Abstract: Global policy commitments to refugee protection are shaped by ever‐growing pressures, from displacements triggered by conflicts, extremism and climate crisis to domestic fear‐based politics. Before the COVID‐19 pandemic, many governments were increasingly embracing exclusionary policies, defying the rights of asylum‐seekers and refugees stalled in protracted camp settlements. While such policies contrast starkly with core principles espoused in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Global Compact on Refugees, restrictions on refugees intensified further during the pandemic. This article discusses struggles shaped by these trajectories, drawing on policy analysis and experiences articulated in Tongogara Refugee Camp in Zimbabwe, where displaced people have recently endured impacts of climate disasters along with greater constraints on mobility and the hardening of international borders. We highlight divergences between colonial policy orientations and African philosophies such as Ubuntu that prioritize communal values and humanity towards others. Analysing concerns around encampment and barriers both to resettlement and local integration, we stress that the talents, contributions and fundamental rights of refugees should not be ignored by policy makers, who also need to be attentive to the social and ecological challenges experienced in refugee spaces. Exploring constraints of the various ‘durable solutions’, we draw attention to how uncertainties facing displaced people need to be critically approached as multi‐scalar policy matters, beckoning attention to insufficiently met commitments linked with the Global Compact on Refugees, ways of mobilizing resistance to contemporary colonial bordering and support for refugee‐led initiatives.

Date: 2022
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