Negotiations for refugee repatriation or local settlement: a game-theoretic analysis

Abstract

This paper uses a model developed by Brams and Doherty (1993) to examine negotiations among a country of origin, a country of asylum, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a refugee crisis. A unique feature of the paper is its treatment of the country of asylum as a separate player in the negotiations, which makes the choice to permit or deny settlement in the asylum country endogenous. The model is applied to two groups of Rwandese refugees: Tutsis living in exile in Burundi for three decades and Hutus in Zaire during the 1990s. The contrasting circumstances surrounding these two refugee crises provide an opportunity to study asylum countries that were sympathetic and unsympathetic, and to model changing attitudes in the country of origin and the international community toward the refugees. For both crises, the predictions of the model are broadly consistent with the unfolding of the negotiation process and the opportunities that eventually became available to the refugees.