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Protracted refugee situations are a critical and growing element in continuing conflict and instability, especially in Africa. Such situations can result in direct security concerns, including the presence of armed elements within the refugee population and the spill-over of conflict across borders, and indirect security concerns, as tensions rise between local populations and refugees over the allocation of scarce resources. Somali refugees in Kenya and Burundian refugees in Tanzania constitute two of the most challenging protracted refugee situations in Africa. The overall response to protracted refugee situations remains fragmented, compartmentalised and ineffective. What is required is a new policy agenda that extends beyond conventional boundaries and seeks to integrate the resolution of chronic and recurring regional refugee problems with economic development and security issues. © 2005 The International Institute for Strategic Studies.

This article examines the long‐stating importance of refugee issues in international politics and underlines the changing emphasis given to these issues by policy makers and academic researchers, both in the immediate post‐Cold War and post‐9/11 periods. The authors then address the manner in which the relationship between forced migration and state security has been addressed in the past decade. The article highlights how this area of research continues to over‐emphasize the migration‐related security of Western states and the presence of armed elements in refugee movements in the Third World. In contrast, the literature largely neglects the security concerns of states hosting protracted refugee populations. Ironically, chronic refugee situations in regions of refugee origin constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's refugee population.

Asylum policies in Britain and in the countries of its EU partners are failing to cope with the demands made upon them. With migration pressures mounting and opportunities for legal immigration to many EU states restricted, larger numbers of potential migrants are turning to alternative means of entry and access, namely irregular migration and asylum channels. The responses of states to these challenges have been to adopt more restrictive policies and practices that have considerably changed the balance between immigration control and refugee protection. While states have the right to control entry and enforce their borders, the restrictive measures that have come to dominate policy-making and recent immigration enforcement initiatives in Britain and its European partners do not sufficiently discriminate between asylum seekers and other kinds of migrants, thereby failing to safeguard the right of refugees to seek protection. Current British proposals to move asylum seekers to ‘safe areas’ in regions of origin fail to understand the burdens, pressures and priorities of countries in the regions, fail to ensure effective protection for those in need, and are unlikely to deliver the UK policy objective of substantially reducing the numbers of illegal entries to Britain. What is needed is an approach that reduces the number of individuals seeking protection in Europe while maintaining the European tradition of providing asylum to those in genuine need. The ‘missing link’ in asylum policy that would respond both to the concerns of states and to the protection needs of refugees is more comprehensive engagement in regions of refugee origin. It is in this way that western asylum countries, including the UK, may best address the challenge of providing international protection to victims of persecution and respond to their own concerns about asylum.

This chapter examines the role of gender in displacement, focusing on women’s and men’s experiences and the different ways in which gender identities, roles, and relations are influenced by processes of and responses to forced migration. It begins with a brief historical overview of feminist and gendered analyses of forced migration. It then explores the causes and experiences of forced migration by drawing on gendered evaluations of individualized persecution and experiences of conflict-induced mass displacement. It also explores the nature of refugee status determination processes, highlighting emerging sensitivity to the interconnectedness between sexual orientation, gender identity, and asylum. Furthermore, it considers developments in responses to sexual and gender-based violence in mass displacement contexts, along with the paradoxical implications of policies aimed at promoting gender equality and empowerment in camp contexts. The chapter concludes by commenting on the gendered nature of the three durable solutions: local integration, repatriation, and resettlement.

This article situates the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) within the context of world politics. States remain the predominant actors in the international political system. But this does not mean that international organizations like the UNHCR are completely without power or influence. Tracing the evolution of the agency over the past half century, this article argues that while the UNHCR has been constrained by states, the notion that it is a passive mechanism with no independent agenda of its own is not borne out by the empirical evidence of the past 50 years. Rather UNHCR policy and practice have been driven both by state interests and by the office acting independently or evolving in ways not expected nor necessarily sanctioned by states.

The end of the Cold communal, and religious clashes; the phenomenon of "failed states"; and reporting of humanitarian catastrophes as never before in world media have led many to claim a broader mandate for outside intervention in a state's internal conflicts. Traditional notions of security and sovereignty are being challenged, placing refugee issues much higher on the international agenda and creating new opportunities for international action. While international responses to humanitarian crises are still more often than not reactive and based on ad hoc initiatives, there is growing international awareness of the linkage between human rights abuses, forcible displacement of civilian populations, and local, regional, and international security. The sobering experiences with interventions in protracted crises in Iraqi Kurdistan, Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda underscore the fact that humanitarian measms alone are seldom enough to deal with refugee problems. A wide range of actions, most of them far short of military action, can be taken to avert large-scale refugee crises. International humanitarian agencies, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), currently promote the concept of "soft intervention"' to prevent situations from degenerating into violent conflicts. Sustained political and diplomatic initiatives, development assistance, human rights monitoring, and the strengthening of civil societies through the building of democratic institutions are all measures that would

PART I: THE INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK: Jean-Pierre Hocke: Beyond humanitarianism: The need for political will to resolve today's refugee problem Jonas Widgren: Europe and international migration in the future: The necessity for merging migration, refugee, and development policies Randolph Kent: Emergency aid: Politics and priorities PART II: DIMENSIONS OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM: Elly-Alikunda Mtango: Military and armed attacks on refugee camps Dennis McNamara: The origins and effects of 'human deterrance' policies in South-east Asia Arthur C. Helton: The detention of refugees and asylum-seekers: A misguided threat to refugee protection Genevi eve Camus-Jacques: Refugee women: The forgotten majority Elizabeth G. Ferris: The Churches, refugees, and politics Roy McDowall: Co-ordination of refugee policy in Europe Johan Cels: Responses of European states to de facto refugees PART III: THE SEARCH FOR APPROPRIATE RESPONSES TO THE REFUGEE PROBLEM: Jacques Cu 'enod: Refugees: Development or relief? Guy Goodwin-Gill: Voluntary repatriation: Legal and policy issues Fred Cuny: Prospects for and promotion of spontaneous repatriation Robert Bach: Third country resettlement Dennis Gallagher: Safe haven: The need for North American-European responses Leon Gordenker: Early warning of refugee incidents: Potentials and obstacles Gervase Coles: Approaching the refugee problem today.

Humanitarian work is generally perceived to be somehow separated from politics. This perception has persisted to some extent in the field of refugee protection and assistance. Yet workers in the field, especially those who assist refugees, are keenly aware that their activities are deeply intertwined with politics. Refugees are, in fact, an intensely political issue, and their existence affects both foreign and domestic policy, exacerbates interstate conflicts, and influences international attitudes. An international regime -UN agencies, governments, churches, and voluntary agencies -evolved after World War II to aid and protect refugees. When the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in 1951, its work was required to be humanitarian and nonpolitical. However, the postwar period is full of examples where political considerations have influenced international and governmental responses to refugee crises. The cold war in Europe facilitated the reception and care given to East European refugees in the 1950s and 1960s. UNHCR officials have realized for some time that whatever power they exercise is largely dependent on the financial and political support of the United States government and other large donor countries. In the United States it has been common for the government to link humanitarian concerns to strategic national interests. Refugees have been used both symbolically and instrumentally to serve larger American foreign policy concerns.' "Freedom fighters" from

The elimination of internal frontiers between the European Community member states and free movement across national borders within the region is central to the realization of a 'single market' within the Community after 1992. But it has not, so far, been widely appreciated that the formation of a single market will also require the strengthening of the Community's external border controls-which will inevitably have major implications for refugee and asylum policy in the region. Since the mid-1 980s, West European governments have been meeting in a number of different forums to try to unify Community policies and practice towards asylumseekers by 1992. Governments' current endeavours to harmonize their policies have been met with grave suspicion and even hostility by many of the parties traditionally involved with protecting the interests of refugees in Western Europe.1 Voluntary agencies, churches and some parliamentarians are concerned that governments intend to control the influx of asylum-seekers by restricting access to the asylum procedures of European countries. They fear that, in their attempt to forge a regional policy on asylum, West European governments will adopt the lowest common denominatorthat is, the policies of the most restrictive states-as the standard for the region. To these groups, a European refugee regime which permits a lesser degree of international commitment to refugees appears more threatening than the lack of any coordinated policy at all. In fact what is needed is a policy which responds both to the concerns of governments and to the needs of refugees-a policy that is discriminating, yet just. Simply building new barriers around Europe will not make the refugee problem go away. The present increase in the number of refugees is not a temporary phenomenon, but is basically the consequence of political, economic and demographic conditions in the Third World. Ad hoc humanitarian efforts will not resolve the crisis. Long-term strategies are urgently required, not only to alleviate the problem in the interim, but to

‘The Refugee in International Society’, in Gil Loescher and Alexander Betts eds., Refugees in International Relations (Oxford University Press, in press).