ABSTRACT
The number of refugees who are forced to live in camps has continuously grown over the past decades. Humanitarian organizations under the lead of UNHCR in many cases take over tasks that otherwise fall upon states, administering long-term refugee camps and providing necessary services to its inhabitants. The chapter analyses how the involvement of UNHCR in direct assistance grew over time and how it relates to the issue of responsibility-sharing for refugees. It outlines the characteristics of refugee camps and discusses what these conditions mean for refugees’ access to political voice and membership. The division of sovereignty between humanitarian organizations and the state, and the separation from the local population mean that refugees have little or no access to the political life of the state. Without access to citizenship even after many years, refugees remain refugees indefinitely, unless they can return to their state of origin. Moreover, the paradigm of emergency and survival in refugee camps obstructs the formulation of deprival as a political question and casts it as a humanitarian concern instead. The chapter examines how UNHCR fostered participatory policies in camps over the past two decades and looks at critiques of these schemes and their implementation. Ultimately, the lives of refugees are most strongly impacted by factors on which such participation does not touch.
