The right to return A further connection between human rights and the refugee problem is to be found in relation to the repatriation and reintegration of displaced populations. Refugees are most likely to exercise their right to repatriate voluntarily when they feel that their security can be assured, both during their journey home and once they have returned to their homeland. In the period since that call was made, however, refugees have not always waited for such ideal conditions to be established before going back to their homes. Indeed, it is now quite common for mass repatriation movements to take place in countries which are still affected by armed conflict, where human rights violations continue to take place, and where the causes of the original exodus have not been fully resolved.
Refugees repatriate in such difficult circumstances for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes, as in the case of Afghanistan, they decide to go home because an acceptable degree of peace and stability has returned to their own district or province, even though violent struggles for power are taking place in the capital city and other parts of the country. In other instances, as with the half a million Ethiopians who repatriated from Somalia in 1991-92, refugees go home because life has simply become too dangerous in their country of asylum. In a third scenario, illustrated by the case of the Myanmar refugees in Bangladesh, refugees repatriate to countries where only limited changes have taken place because they cannot remain indefinitely in their country of asylum and because they have received assurances regarding their safety once they return to their homeland.