Durable Solutions, Definitions, and Decency

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
05 December '10

The State Department has released an “Overview of U.S. Refugee Policy” that begins as follows:

At the end of 2009, the estimated refugee population stood at 15.2 million, with 10.5 million receiving protection or assistance from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The United States actively supports efforts to provide protection, assistance, and durable solutions to refugees. …

The Overview has a lengthy discussion of “durable solutions” for the 10.5 million refugees but fails to discuss the 4.7 million others. There is a reason — one that helps explain the failure of the “peace process.”

According to the Overview, where opportunities for refugees to return to their homelands are “elusive,” the U.S. and its partners pursue “self-sufficiency and local integration in countries of asylum” — since “resettlement in third countries [is] a vital tool for … durable solutions.” With U.S. support, UNHCR last year referred refugees to 27 countries, and UNHCR says its 10.5 million number is “down 8 percent from a year earlier” — meaning UNHCR found a “durable solution” for nearly a million refugees last year alone. Each year, the number of UNHCR refugees decreases.

The other 4.7 million refugees are Palestinians — and every year, their number increases, since they have a separate UN organization (UNRWA) that uses a different definition of “refugee.” For Palestinians, a “refugee” includes not only people made homeless by war or political disturbance but also the descendants of such people. Once one is a Palestinian refugee, one’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren become refugees, simply by virtue of being born. The status is a hereditary right (”inalienable,” as the UN likes to say).

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