Despite
these covenants, the refugee faces an array of the obstacles which must be
surmounted before his or her political rights can be fully realized. Such obstacles
include intimidation, illustrated among other things by the use of food relief
as a tool to gain the political cooperation of groups of refugees; physical
obstacles such as destroyed bridges or remote or impenetrable border crossings;
and difficulty in accessing both election-specific information and more general
reporting on civic life at home.
Refugees
traditionally have been among the last of marginalized groups to become
enfranchised. International practice on the promotion of the political rights
of refugees has not yet been standardized. There is a lack consistency from
region to region in terms of resource allocation, practice and institutional
leadership. The range of policy differences is illustrated by a comparison of
the examples of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996, where refugee enfranchisement
was written into the 1995 General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (the Dayton Agreement) and balloting was conducted for refugees in
55 countries, and Liberia in 1997 where there were no out-of-country
enfranchisement opportunities and no organized repatriation.
As the
Refugee Policy Group study (Gallagher and Schowengerdt October 1997) points
out, there are four models of political participation that can be identified in
international practice. These models are:
- limited spontaneous
repatriation;
- elections in asylum;
- full organized repatriation;
and
- limited spontaneous and
facilitated repatriation.
The
application of consistent international standards takes on special significance
in the case of refugees because, by definition, enfranchisement efforts are
international: they involve cross-border agreements between the countries and
international organizations charged with administrative responsibilities or the
implementation of peace accords. The recognition of consistent international
principles on refugee enfranchisement and participation would also act as a
foil to the tactic of ‘cleansing’ a region or community to expel a population
and eliminate its political interests. The political motives for displacing
people would be reduced if the refugee populations produced by rogue regimes
did not lose their political rights but continued to have a voice and to vote
regardless of their temporary dislocation.
Not only are there obstacles for refugees to
overcome in achieving their political rights, but the international
organizations that are charged with implementing enfranchisement programmes and
promoting participation by refugees face obstacles of their own. These include
competing policy options, time constraints and resource limitations.
