{"id":4141,"date":"2016-11-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T16:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.voelkerrechtsblog.org\/articles\/the-arab-refugee-paradox\/"},"modified":"2020-12-09T13:28:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T12:28:26","slug":"the-arab-refugee-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voelkerrechtsblog.org\/de\/the-arab-refugee-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arab Refugee Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan host some of the largest numbers<\/a> of refugees in the world. However, among the Arab states, only Egypt and Yemen have signed the Geneva Convention of 1951 on the status of refugees. While nation states in the West have long offered the possibility of full citizenship to immigrants and refugees, it is surprising that the \u2018Arab Unity\u2019 model idealised by important Arab political leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Hafez Al-Assad in Syria or Saddam Hussein in Iraq did not envision a form of permanent incorporation of other Arabs into any part of the \u2018Arab Nation\u2019. The Arab Unity model refers also to Pan-Arabism or Arabism that is an ideology focusing on the unification of the countries of North Africa and West Asia \u2013 the Arab world. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts that the Arab constitute a single nation. Advocates of pan-Arabism have often hold up to socialist<\/a> principles and strongly opposed Western<\/a> political involvement in the Arab world. Moreover, it sought to empower Arab states from outside forces by forming alliances and, to a lesser extent, economic co-operation. Paradoxically, the Arab Unity framework, which has endured to this day, encourages Arab citizens of other states to have a stake in a supranational Arab identity without offering a coherent legal and political framework for the protection and integration of Arab refugees (further discussion here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The 1951 Convention, which was drafted in the aftermath of World War II and the first Arab-Israeli conflict, emphasizes the protection of persons from political or other forms of persecution. According to the Convention, a refugee is a person, who is unable or unwilling to return to his country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. The Convention is both a status and rights-based instrument and is underpinned by a number of fundamental principles, most notably non-discrimination, non-penalization and non-refoulement.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the reluctance of the Arab countries to adhere to the Convention of 1951 is a major obstacle to govern the movement of people in the region that has taken unprecedented dimensions with far reaching consequences for Europe, its neighbourhood and the Arab states themselves.<\/p>\n

The European Union \u2013 in search of a solution to the so called refugee and migration crisis \u2013 has on several occasions urged its Arab partner states to sign the Geneva Convention of 1951 in order to \u2018legalize\u2019 readmission agreements with the southern neighbourhood countries \u2013 hitherto without success. Most countries of the regions face tremendous problems with regard to infrastructure, education, health care services and job opportunities, that they are simply not in the position to meet the requirement set in the Convention on the protection of refugees.<\/p>\n

While regional conventions dealing with refugees in the Arab world have actually been developed, they have only scarcely been implemented.\u00a0In the context of the first Intifada<\/em> (1987-1994), two regional meetings were held with the intention to explore solutions and develop mechanisms to help host Arab countries to deal with the situation of increasing refugee flows. These regional meetings resulted in the draft of two main documents: (1) The Cairo Declaration on the Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Arab World<\/a> that was adopted in November 1992 and (2) the Arab Convention on Regulating the Status of Refugees in the Arab Countries<\/a> adopted by the Arab League in 1994. While these regional agreements target important problems of the refugee issue in the Middle East and foresee some relevant solutions \u2013 for example the establishment of an Arab institution for refugees \u2013 these objectives have mostly not been achieved.<\/p>\n

Moreover, many Arab countries \u2013 in order to protect their own societies \u2013 do not have domestic laws governing the status of refugees. Indeed, with the exception of Jordan, none of the Arab states has \u2013 for political reasons \u2013 offered the possibility of naturalisation and permanent citizenship rights (for an overview see here<\/a>). Thus, most refugees in Middle Eastern countries struggle to survive, face obstacles sending their children to school and are obliged to turn to illicit activities reinforcing in return discriminatory actions by the host states.<\/p>\n

Although Lebanon for example hosts a considerable number of Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian refugees, the country is neither a state party to the 1951 Geneva Convention nor to its additional protocol of 1967. Lebanese politicians have to face the fear deeply engrained in Lebanese society that attributing a \u2018legal\u2019 status to refugees will increase the competition between Lebanese citizens and refugees with regard to jobs, education, health and social-welfare services. This attitude goes back to the Nakba<\/em> causing the influx of thousands of Palestinians to other Arab countries, especially Lebanon. The term Nakba means \u201cdisaster\u201d or \u201ccatastrophe\u201d and refers to the Palestinian exodus of 1948 when more than 700,000<\/a> Palestinian Arabs<\/a> needed to flee or were expelled from their homes<\/a>, because of the first Arab-Israeli war between December 1947 and January 1949 (more here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

One major contradiction at the centre of the refugee issue in the Middle East resides in the opposition between the ideal of the supranational Arab Nation and its framework of cooperation and interaction among Arab peoples on the one hand and the system of sovereign nation-states defined by geopolitical borders that structure people\u2019s movement on the other hand.<\/p>\n

The European Union as well as researchers and advocates from Western institutions have tried to encourage Arab states to expand their international legal obligations toward refugees in their borders \u2014 especially, through the promotion of the 1951 Convention as a tool for refugee protection. However, seeing the local conditions in the Arab countries, it seems difficult to oblige these states to adhere to the 1951 Convention in any near future.<\/p>\n

Given the lack of legal structures, there is a need for more profound solutions. These need to include both top-down and local bottom-up approaches to ensure a better integration of refugees in their Arab host societies:<\/p>\n