Resettlement
Refugee organizations usually promote three “durable solutions” for refugees: 1) voluntary repatriation, when refugees are able to return to their home countries because they are no longer at risk, 2) local integration, when refugees are integrated into the country of first asylum, and 3) resettlement in a third country, when repatriation isn’t possible and the country of first-asylum refuses local integration.[10] Refugee camps are “temporary” resettlements built to receive refugees while they await repatriation or resettlement. For example, many refugee camps have been built to house refugees along the Thai-Burma border while they wait for a “durable solution.”
Refugee warehousing, or a “protracted refugee situation”, is defined by UNHCR as a situation in which “refugees find themselves in a long-lasting and intractable state of limbo [where] … their basic rights and essential economic, social and psychological needs remain unfulfilled after years in exile. A refugee in this situation is often unable to break free from enforced reliance on external assistance’.[11] When identifying major refugee warehousing situations, UNHCR used the ‘measure of refugee populations of 25,000 persons or more who have been in exile for five or more years in developing countries’.[12] More simply, refugee warehousing describes the practice of denying refugees basic rights such as freedom of movement, the right to work, and the right to own property by keeping them in refugee camps for an extended period of time. For example, many of the refugees near the Darfur region of Sudan have been living in refugee camps for years. They are forbidden from working or traveling and confined to the camps, dependent on receiving food and health care from aid organizations in order to survive.
For circumstances where refugees cannot return home because of the threat of persecution and cannot remain in the country where they initially sought protection, UNHCR considers refugee resettlement in a third country as “the only safe and viable durable solution”. The resettlement country must “provide refugees with legal and physical protection, and allow them access to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights similar to those enjoyed by nationals and should allow for refugees to become naturalized citizens”.[13] In the United States, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was created to assist refugees in becoming integrated, self-sufficient and contributing members of American society.[14] Resettlement agencies also assist newly arrived refugees in addressing basic needs such as finding apartments, obtaining employment, enrolling children in school, etc., as well as help refugees build support systems within the United States.