ABSTRACT
I was in Geneva interviewing officials regarding what they saw as the environmental demands and organisational reasons that accounted for the evolution of the agency’s repatriation policy. This particular official was slightly more vitriolic than most when it came to defending a policy that had been accused of playing fast and loose with traditional refugee rights. He readily agreed that UNHCR no longer clung to the original principles guiding voluntary repatriation and insisted that such departures were warranted because, firstly, states were demanding that refugees return as quickly as possible and, secondly, there was no objectively “safe” benchmark in many “postconflict” settings. I conceded the broad point that if UNHCR had to wait for the ideal conditions before sponsoring a repatriation exercise then it might have to wait forever, yet wondered aloud about the opposing danger of sacrificing principles on the altar of pragmatism. “How does the agency know when it is about to go too far? How far would the agency go? At what point are principles stretched beyond recognition?” It was then that he revealed the ethical bottom line: the agency would never physically coerce a return. Certainly many UNHCR staff would repudiate this position and would draw the line closer to original rights and principles but his candidness and position within the agency suggested that his views were hardly unfashionable.
