Humanitarianism and Return: Compromising Protection?

In many contexts around the world, states use funding for humanitarian programming as an active part of their attempts to manage populations displaced by conflict. Humanitarian aid to refugees and internally displaced is commonly understood as a temporary activity that ends when people will return home. Yet returnees can often not be provided with protection and ‘return’ for many entails a first encounter with a new place. This policy brief argues that humanitarian organizations have the responsibility to analyze the long-term security implications of their decisions on where to provide aid.