Paper short abstract:

Through the lens of a key international refugee conference hosted in Addis Ababa this paper sheds light on plans drawn up to manage the presence and future of African refugees and argues for the importance of the decolonization period in understanding an international history of refugee management.

Paper long abstract:

The conference report of the Conference on the Legal, Economic and Social Aspects of African refugee problems, held between October 9-18th 1967 in Addis Ababa notes: “the whole refugee problem in Africa is essentially a problem of the 1960’s and this is very significant, since the 1960’s is the decade of maximum decolonization and the intensification of the struggle for independence on the part of the still colonial and dependent peoples” (Final report, 1968, p.9). This quotation links the presence of refugees firmly to processes of decolonization and insinuates, by temporarily anchoring Africa’s refugee challenge in the 1960s, a hope for a future without refugees for independent Africa. The decolonization era is indeed a crucial period for refugee-management on the African continent and international organizations like the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and NGOs like the International University Exchange Fund and the Lutheran World Federation became active in addressing what the conference defined as the “refugee problem” on the continent. In this paper, I argue for the importance of the decolonization period in telling an international history of refugee management. I do so by exploring legal, educational and settlement plans formulated at the 1967 conference to manage the presence and future of Africa’s refugees and ask what impact these plans had on refugee management on the African continent and beyond.