event

International Conference on the Reception and Integration of Resettled Refugees, 2001

Wed. May 16th, 2001

On May 16, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Migration Policy Program hosted a panel consisting of organizers of the International Conference on the Reception and Integration of Resettled Refugees, held on April 25 to 27, 2001 in Sweden. Nearly 300 participants from 20 countries and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) attended the conference to exchange ideas and best practices concerning successful refugee resettlement. The panel included John Fredriksson, consultant to UNHCR and responsible for much the preparation for the conference; KaYing Yang, Executive Director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center and a member of the conference's Executive Committee; and Mark Hetfield, Director of International Operations of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and a member of the Executive Committee. Kathleen Newland, co-director of the International Migration Policy Program, acted as moderator.

Newland noted the importance of the conference. Many countries have shown increasing interest in resettlement as a form of protection and as an alternative to open asylum procedures. The conference focused on integration, a very important topic. Attendants shared their experiences and best practices.

Fredriksson expressed his thanks to all involved and spoke about the goals of the conference. He suggested that anyone interested in the conference and resettlement view papers posted on the website of the Swedish National Immigration Office, which is easily accessible via UNHCR's website.. He said this is the first time that material on these subjects has been assembled from an international perspective.

The conference took place within the context of an ongoing "integration project," of which the conference is only one piece. Integration is very important to UNHCR for several reasons. First, resettlement has three main functions: 1) as a tool of international protection 2) as a durable solution which restores dignity and offers refugees a promising future 3) as a means of responsibility-sharing to assist states who have a large influx of refugees. Responsibility-sharing is important to act as a safety valve and preserve the option of asylum. Without it, countries with large refugee populations may feel pressure to restrict asylum.

The mission of the conference was to design an international forum for exchange of ideas. It was the first time UNHCR actively expressed an interest in the qualitative elements of resettlement, rather than viewing their job as finished once a refugee is resulted. There were four goals of the conference:

To commonly endorse principles for the successful integration, which are applicable regardless of the level of funding.
To facilitate links and exchanges between resettlement countries.
To gather resources for a handbook on resettlement and integration.
To strengthen the reception and integration programs in countries.

Another important idea for UNHCR is to be involved with refugees after resettlement. In the past, UNHCR felt it had completed its job when the refugee boarded the plane for resettlement. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups that assisted resettlement felt their job began when the refugee got off the plane. There is a need to incorporate these two ends.

The objective of the conference was to expand resettlement opportunities -- creating higher numbers of resettled refugees and engaging more countries who accept refugees for resettlement. There are ten traditional countries of resettlement, and the United States is the largest of these ten. There are eight new countries of resettlement: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. Increasing the numbers of resettled refugees means increasing the potential for responsibility-sharing with countries of first asylum. Moving some refugees into countries of resettlement eases the responsibility of countries who receive many first-asylum cases. It internationalizes the issue, in a positive way.

Fredriksson stated some the aspects of the conference.

There were 265 participants from 18 resettlement countries plus Germany and Britain (who accept a few resettlement cases on an ad hoc basis).
The participants came from national governments, state or provisional governments, non-governmental organizations, members of refugee communities, and UNHCR workers.
The strategy was to build a bottoms-up process. The conference involved the voices of many people.
Strong bonds already existed between government level actors, non-governmental level, and practitioners between these 18 countries. The conference produced documents to provide information about their different systems and practices.
Over 50 of the participants were former refugees. It created a very important opportunity for practitioners and policy-makers to hear refugee voices. The Canadian government gathered 100 statements by refugees discussing what resettlement means for them.

Fredriksson emphasized that in order for resettlement to achieve its three main functions, it must be viewed holistically, beginning with identifying cases for resettlement and following through the quality of resettlement.

One important lesson of the conference was that the resettlement process is rooted in a tripartite model, including governments, civil society organization (especially with representatives from the refugee community), and UNHCR. In the conference, all three were co-equal partners, which is unique to the international scene. In the short-term, Fredriksson hopes that the conference will lead to increased sharing of information resources so that countries who are developing resettlement systems will not repeat the mistakes of other countries.

KaYing Yang, Executive Director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, emphasized the importance of involving refugees in discussion of refugee issues. Many refugees participated in the conference; every country included a refugee representative in their delegation, and they played a very vocal role. It was important for UNHCR workers to interact with refugees. The Indo-Chinese refugee community in the United States provides many lessons for resettlement, because that community has experienced a long-term integration process in the U.S. In the short-term, most refugees want only to survive. Long-term integration involves more profound questions: What is one's identity? Are you still a refugee after many years?

Yang said it is key to understand the definition of integration. Refugees often worry about assimilation, but integration is a two-way street involving refugees and their new communities and does mean giving up all former identities. Integration is an ongoing individual process; it occurs at different degrees depending on the individual and the community. In the end, refugees must integrate in order to survive and prosper, so the question to address is what types of models help them best and build hospitable communities, not whether or not they will integrate. Yang felt that although the traditional countries of resettlement have the most experience from which new resettlement countries can learn, traditional countries also learned a lot at the conference from new countries. For example, Yang learned that Iceland distributes flyers to the communities of new refugee families asking members of the communities to welcome the refugees. It is important to look not only at how refugees integrate but also at the receiving community and education and advocation practices.

Another issue discussed at the conference was the obstacles that refugees of ethnic and racial minorities face. During orientation, refugees in many resettlement countries usually learn about daily necessities, such as how to use the phone and the post office. However, they seldom learn about the environment in which they resettle, such as race-relations.

Refugees should be at the center of discussions on refugee issues and play a leadership role. Refugees from older refugee communities, such as the Southeast Asian community in the U.S., should have a vital role because they have undergone and learned from the entire integration process.

Yang concluded that the conference is a beginning, and the principles produced by the conference should provide a guideline for future practice.

Mark Hetfield of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society spoke about the precedents the conference sets and the next steps. The most important precedent -- emphasized by the previous speakers -- is that refugees must be meaningfully involved in policy formulation and practice, which the conference did well. There was a refugee voice on almost every panel at the conference. The refugees helped other participants understand many important aspects of integration. The real barrier to integration is not understanding aspects of daily life, like using public transportation, it is battling loneliness, sense of loss, and other personal issues that come with resettlement and the refugee experience. There is a need to address these issues in cultural orientation programs. There should be a personal touch in integration programs, which can be accomplished without huge budgets.

The conference's leaders emphasized looking at the integration process and end results and discouraged a trend to base selection of refugees for resettlement on the likelihood of integration. It is impossible to predict who can integrate easiest, and it should be irrelevant; resettlement is primarily about protecting refugees. Some governments disagree with that, so it is not one of the conference's stated principles. The contributions of refugees at the conference showed that many refugees integrate well and become assets to societies if the new community welcomes them.

Hetfield noted that there is often little cooperation between non-governmental organizations and governments, and governments often try to promote their policies as the best. However, any uncooperative tone was absent from the conference. He hopes that positive partnerships can be maintained in the future.

Now the participants need to take concrete steps: distributing the principles and information, developing an integration handbook (along the lines of the resettlement handbook), and holding more meetings.

Discussion

An audience member commented that another outcome of the conference was recognizing that people are in the field and have experience to share. In the past, such experience had been isolated from countries' practices. There needs to be a way to share knowledge. Kathleen Newland agreed and said that is beginning to happen. The process needs to go further and use the lessons the refugee resettlement to assist the integration of non-refugee immigrants.
An audience member said the next challenge is to codify the knowledge brought together in the conference and the experience of other workers with refugee issues. Rather than relying on descriptive case studies, there needs to be more analysis. We need to understand the environment and context of resettlement and do hypothesis testing to turn the work into a true discipline. Newland said that the new migration policy institute -- The Migration Policy Institute -- will look at resettlement and integration as one its major fields of study. (The Migration Policy Institute will be formed from the current International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in July 2001. The website will be www.migrationpolicy.org). However, another audience member cautioned that scientific approaches tend to be restrictive and may be used to tighten protection policies; he stated that he was not enthusiastic about creating a science of immigration.
Joanne van Selm mentioned that the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration is trying to increase the strength of refugee voices in policy, and she was happy to hear that the conference emphasized that also. As the co-editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies, she invited people to write on resettlement and integration for the journal. She asked why other states did not attend the conference. She said that European Union governments seem to want to start choosing refugees rather than allow refugees to choose them.
Fredriksson mentioned that the Journal of Refuge will publish a special issue on this subject. Authors must submit contributions by the end of August. He emphasized that the organizers do not want this conference to turn into a typical conference with little action. There was a focus on practitioners and on countries of resettlement. The organizers also limited the topic to integration and resettlement rather than having a political debate over asylum policies.
Hetfield commented that the organizers tried to recruit countries other than the 20 who attended. They tried to keep European Union proposals about acceptance for resettlement off the agenda, although it did come up. He emphasized that resettlement is a complementary form of protection, not a substitute.
An audience member who attended the conference commented that the conference provides a unique opportunity to build on its work and address the special needs of certain countries. For example, she learned from members of the Ireland delegations that they are inundated with Romanian Roma. They found integrating the Roma very difficult and wanted advice. They found a woman who happened to be an expert on resettling Roma and discussed the issue with her. The conference was very helpful in that case, which was important because already they had turned sour about resettlement.
Another audience member commented on a presentation by Chile at the conference. They had not had a positive experience with resettlement. There was not much opportunity at the conference to investigate the experiences of such countries.
Fredriksson said that to their credit, countries like Chile who have experienced problems still continue resettlement despite difficulties. There have been some exchanges of knowledge between resettlement countries. There needs to be a way to funnel the experience of traditional resettlement countries to countries that require assistance. The issue should be more international and reduce the share of resettlement given to a particular country, such as the U.S. which receives about 80 percent of resettlement cases. He also noted that UNHCR sees itself as a facilitator for integration, not an expert; integration is mostly the responsibility of states.
An audience member said that some states within the U.S., such as Iowa, struggle with resettlement difficulties. There needs to be a way to disseminate information about resettlement practices among states governments in the U.S. Newland said that one of the partners with the new Migration Policy Institute is the Council of State Legislatures. She noted that some states in the U.S. are new to resettlement and are desperate for advice and guidelines.
An audience member said that the State Department's Bureau of Population, Migration, and Refugees (PRM) is reviewing materials in cultural orientation programs. They try to help manage refugees' expectations, so they provide them with specifics rather than real cultural orientation. They have designed their educational materials partly based on input from refugees.
Yang noted that the refugees at the conference had their own areas of expertise. She hopes that in the future refugee practitioners will see them more as capable people with skills rather than simply as refugees.
Newland said that integration will continue as a focus of the new Migration Policy Institute. She said that an issue for future discussion in the contradiction between emphasizing the positive skills and benefits that refugees bring to a society while asking governments not to consider refugees' skills and predicted ability to integrate when selecting refugees for resettlement.

Summary by Kerry Boyd, Junior Fellow for the International Migration Policy Program