Determination of National Refugee Policies Using System Dynamics Approach

Abstract

According to the recent UNHCR data, at the end of 2016, an unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world have been forced away from home. Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees, over half of whom are minors. Figures in the report showed that, worldwide, most refugees -84 per cent -were accommodated in developing or middle-income countries at the end of 2016, with 4.9 million people being hosted by the world's least developed countries. This huge imbalance reflects the lack of international consensus when it comes to hosting refugees. It also illustrates the need for countries and communities supporting refugees and other displaced people to be properly protected and supported, the absence of which can cause instability, have consequences for life-saving humanitarian work or lead to secondary displacement. Humanitarian protection, whether for refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons (IDPs), represents a key policy area for many major immigrant-receiving countries as well as nations bordering locations where war, political upheaval, or natural disaster have disrupted daily life. Refugee policy is a formal statement of, and proposed course of action in response to, a problem relating to protection, solutions or assistance for refugees or other populations of concern to the global refugee regime. With that objective, national refugee policy can be used to describe any course of action which intends to change a certain situation. National government uses policy to tackle a wide range of issues. In fact, it can make policies that could change laws and regulations in domain of security, economic, education, immigration, refugee protection etc. Think of policies as a starting point for national government to take a course of action that makes a refugee real life change. The paper presents a conceptual idea of definition of system archetype in the field of National protection refugee policies based on the system thinking. The basic idea is to point at the analytical potential of the System Dynamics (SD) concept in determination of National refugee protection policies by using the simulation approach. We will use the SD simulation approach, Security dialogues 128 which can provide an insight into dynamic processes of changes in the system and interaction of elements that define the activities pertaining to determination of refugee policies. The SD model is represented as a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) showing the cause-consequence relations between system elements. Through computer simulation, the model developed using the CLD enables analysis of various scenarios as a basis for evaluation and decision making support in the field of National refugee protection policies.