3. ENSURING THAT TODAY’S REFUGEES ARE NOT TOMORROW’S STATELESS: SOLUTIONS IN A REFUGEE CONTEXT Exclusion from the possibility of naturalising can be seen as intimately linked with other refugee policy responses that focus on exclusion, including governments’ privileging of repatriation as the only viable solution to the near total exclusion of integration. In a context in which the default position of host governments (and as a result, UNHCR) has often been to house refugees in camps and settlements, while many have technically “enjoyed” international protection under refugee law, in reality the conditions of their exile – constrained by lack of freedom of movement and exclusion from meaningful integration, among other issues – has been characterised by marginalisation from meaningful engagement with the State. UNHCR’s new ‘Alternatives to Camps’ policy, discussed below, offers a significant opportunity to challenge the status quo in this regard. While host countries are likely to be reluctant to grant refugees citizenship under any circumstances, this trepidation is only likely to be increased in circumstances in which de facto integration has been discouraged by encampment. The reality is that many refugees remain in exile indefinitely and lack of access to naturalisation means that they are effectively left with no State to assert their rights. Finally, linkages between forced migration and statelessness are particularly pertinent in discussions on “durable solutions” – which, ultimately, are supposed to be about the (re)securing of citizenship ties either through returning “home” or through obtaining a new nationality. Repatriation has been aggressively pursued as the optimal outcome in any situation of displacement, to the neglect of both resettlement and local integration – just as those who are stateless are often told to look elsewhere for their nationality. All too often refugees have, in practice, become pawns in interState relationships through tripartite agreements that have had a negative, rather than the intended positive, impact on the basic rights of refugees,12 and those who are displaced have, at times, been forced to return “home” even though the circumstances that made them flee have not changed or have not changed sufficiently. For instance, in July 2010 Ugandan police, in conjunction with staff of the Office of the Prime Minister’s Directorate of Refugees, carried out an operation to round up and remove approximately 1,700 12 B.H. Bond, “Repatriation: Under What Conditions Is It the Most Desirable Solution for Refugees? An Agenda for Research.” African Studies Review 1989, Vol. 32(1), pp. 41–69. 76