The myth of free-riding: Refugee protection and implicit burden-sharing

Abstract Why do states accept what appear to be disproportionate and inequitable burdens in the provision of international collective goods? Traditional burden-sharing models emphasise free-riding opportunities of small countries at the expense of larger ones. An alternative model suggests that countries specialise according to their comparative advantage as to the type and level of contribution they make to international collective goods. We apply this model to forced migration and suggest that countries can contribute to refugee protection in two principal ways: proactively, through peacekeeping/making and reactively, by providing protection for displaced persons. While the existing literature on peacekeeping provides evidence for the 'exploitation of the big by the small', our analysis of UNHCR data of 15 OECD countries for the period 1994–2002 balances this view by showing that reactive burdens are disproportionately borne by smaller states. We also show that EU asylum policy initiatives directed at refugee burden-sharing aim at equalising particular dimensions of states' contributions to refugee protection. By doing so, they curtail opportunities for specialisation and risk consolidating a sub-optimal provision of refugee protection. Notes 1. The goods and services that governments provide in the common interest of all individuals are often called collective or public goods. Such goods are assumed to have to one or both of the following characteristics: (1) non-excludability: if the collective good is provided for, everyone automatically benefits (in others words, non-contributors cannot be kept from benefiting from that good), and (2) non-rivalry: if the good is available to any one person/state, it is available to others at little or no additional cost. 2. The adoption of this terminology in the context of forced migration is of course not unproblematic. However, despite its potentially prejudicial connotation in a human rights context in which one might wish the language of costs and benefits to be absent, the term 'burden-sharing' is used here to reflect the way the debate about the perceived and real inequalities in the distribution of displaced persons and refugees has been conducted in Europe over recent years. Attempts to replace the term in this area with a call for responsibility sharing or the 'equal balance of efforts' between the member states have had little impact on the way the public debate has been led. 3. A word on the terminology used in this paper. The term 'refugee' is used here in its broadest sense to characterise individuals who have left their country in the belief that they cannot or should not return to it in the near future, although they might hope to do so if conditions permit. In this usage, the category includes those recognised under the Geneva Convention but also those who have applied for refugee (or a subsidiary) protection status. We use the terms 'displaced persons', 'forced migrants' and 'protection seekers' interchangeably with the term refugee. We take the term 'asylum seeker' to refer to persons who move across international borders in search of protection or who have applied for protection as refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention and are awaiting the determination of their status. We use the term 'Geneva Convention refugee' for persons who have been granted protection under the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. 4. This private good may of course be a public good at the national level. 5. For limitations and inconsistencies with this general argument see Boyer (Citation1989: 715). 6. See Jyoti, Sandler and Shimizu (Citation1998) for the period 1976–1996. 7. According to the official text, the Convention applies to people who, 'owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is [are] outside the country of his [their] nationality and is [are] unable, or owing to such fear, is [are] unwilling to avail himself [themselves] of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his [their] former habitual residence as a result of such events, is [are] unable or, owing to such fear, is [are] unwilling to return to it.' 8. While asylum seekers tend to arrive 'spontaneously' in a host country to file an application for Geneva refugee status, resettled refugees are those whose determination process has been conducted (usually through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in their region of origin) and whom host countries have expressed their willingness to the UNHCR to accept for resettlement in their territory. Whereas in the case of asylum seekers, states have only limited control as to the number they might have to deal with at any particular point in time on the basis of their obligations under the Geneva Convention, states are in full control as to how many resettled refugees they accept. 9. The question of who actually gets recognised as a refugee is still a real issue among the EU member states. The premise is often that an applicant will have the same chance of finding protection as a refugee in all EU countries. But this is not the case. In the Slovak Republic, for example, many of the asylum seekers are Chechens – a group that, for good reason, has a recognition rate of well over 50 per cent in several EU countries – yet by 30 September 2004 only two people had been granted asylum in the Slovak Republic out of 1,081 cases examined that year. In Greece, even when Saddam Hussein was still in power, less than 1 per cent of Iraqi applicants were given refugee status, and the overall recognition rate fell last year to 0.6 per cent. It is not surprising that many asylum seekers move to countries where they think they have a better chance of having their claims recognised (Lubbers Citation2004). In a recent speech Lubbers stressed: 'We need to improve the quality and consistency in asylum decision-making in Europe. It seems unacceptable to me that the same asylum seeker – a Chechen for example – has virtually zero chance of finding protection in one member state, a 50% chance in another and close to 100% in a third' (Lubbers Citation2005). 10. It has often been emphasised that the traditional 'countries of immigration' (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States) offered resettlement places for up to 100,000 refugees in 2004, whereas Europe as a whole only made 4,700 places available (Lubbers Citation2005). 11. Figures provided in the UNHCR's Statistical Yearbook. 12. Parts of this overview are based on Thielemann (Citation2003). 13. See section 45 of the German Asylum Procedure Act (Asylverfahrensgesetz). 14. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 January 1995. 15. Council Decision on an alert and emergency procedure for burden-sharing (4 March 1996), (OJ No L63/10,13 March 1996) and (96/198/JHA). 16. For recent developments see also the Dublin II Regulation on the state responsible for examining an asylum application (L50/1 of 25.2.2003)

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