As the threat from the Islamic State melts away, Germany and other European states will have to judge — far sooner than they expected to — whether to send Syrians back to their devastated homeland, or to some portion of it. Given the political pressures, there is no reason to assume that the decision will be based on the best interests of the refugees themselves.
The obligation of states is spelled out clearly in the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which stipulates that an individual may not be returned if “his life or freedom may be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or opinion.” Guidelines issued by the U.N. High Commission on Refugees dictate that, once granted asylum, refugees may be forcibly returned only when conditions in their home have changed fundamentally and enduringly, in such a way as to ensure a guarantee of protection to formerly persecuted people.
In practice, that standard has been routinely violated. In December 1996, for example, Tanzania gave 500,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees one month to go home, though revenge killings of Hutus were still common. In 2015, Kenya announced that it would close the giant Dadaab refugee camp and expel the 463,000 Somali refugees; they were stopped only after an international outcry. In 2016, Iran forcibly returned 410,000 Afghans, while Pakistan sent back another 253,000.
European countries have never engaged in mass forcible expulsion. Then again, they’ve never had an influx like 2015. And they have begun to practice retail, if not wholesale, repatriation.
The EU has nevertheless invoked the doctrine of the “internal flight alternative,” which dictates that while refugees may not be able to return to their actual home, they can be sent back to places in the country considered safe.
Many Syrian refugees have received asylum for one year, to be renewed as needed. Some of Germany’s provincial interior ministers would like to shorten the period to six months in order to permit expulsions starting in June. They would start with those accused of crimes in Europe, and then perhaps begin deporting broader groups. Like Afghans, Syrians would be sent to zones deemed safe, or to “de-escalation zones” like Idlib province governed by fragile cease-fire agreements.
Would it be acceptable to compel, say, families who have fled Aleppo to return to a home that is flattened but no longer violent? The answer is surely no, both for legal and for moral reasons. As Bill Frelick, the director of refugee rights at Human Rights Watch points out, while in a hearing for refugee status the burden of proof lies with the asylum-seeker, forcible repatriation shifts the burden to the state in question. Have the conditions that compelled flight changed fundamentally and enduringly? In Syria, the threat comes from the Assad regime itself. Even though barrel bombs have stopped falling on Aleppo, returnees would plainly be at risk of persecution and death from the regime and its militias. And no part of Syria can be deemed safe so long as Assad aspires to regain total control. A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute sensibly calls for an end to forced repatriation to all countries in conflict.
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