Return monitoring represented UNHCR's mechanism for tracking repatriated refugee welfare post-departure, attempting to ensure return sustainability and identify populations requiring additional reintegration support. Following organized repatriation movements, UNHCR deployed monitors to return areas conducting beneficiary follow-up surveys assessing conditions, livelihood viability, security status, and reintegration challenges. Monitoring occurred at intervals following return: initial post-return visits, mid-term assessments (several months post-return), and longer-term follow-up (6-12 months post-return). These monitoring visits attempted to document successful returns and identify returnees struggling with reintegration, requiring targeted support intervention.
Monitoring mechanisms involved household surveys and interviews with returnees and communities receiving returnees. Monitors assessed housing conditions, livelihood reconstruction progress, school enrollment of children, security incidents affecting returnees, and social reintegration dynamics. Information was aggregated into statistical reports documenting outcomes across returnee populations. These data informed humanitarian programming; areas with high reintegration difficulties received expanded support while successful return areas received reduced assistance. However, monitoring capacity remained limited; comprehensive monitoring of all returnees proved impossible given monitoring resource constraints. Consequently, monitoring typically involved representative sample surveys rather than complete enumeration.
Return monitoring encountered significant limitations. Follow-up after 6-12 months typically concluded, limiting documentation of longer-term reintegration trajectories. Some returnees proved unreachable during monitoring visits due to relocation, travel, or deliberate evasion. Returnees sometimes provided socially desirable responses regarding security and livelihood out of concern regarding interviewer identity or humanitarian benefit implications; independent verification of reported conditions proved difficult. Furthermore, monitoring statistics remained confidential; returnees suffering severe reintegration difficulties did not always receive follow-up support despite documented need. Monitoring thus provided documentary evidence of return outcomes without always enabling humanitarian system response to documented problems.
Documented monitoring from Somali returns indicated mixed outcomes. Many returnees successfully reestablished livelihoods in relatively secure areas including Kismayo and Baidoa. However, returnees in insecure areas reported ongoing security threats, limited livelihood opportunities, and inadequate housing. Some returnees re-displaced, fleeing renewed violence or unable to sustain initial return plans. Monitoring documented these challenges yet humanitarian response capacity remained insufficient to universally support reintegration. Overall, return monitoring provided important documentation of return sustainability while raising uncomfortable questions regarding humanitarian responsibility for supporting returns that monitoring data revealed to be failing. Continued monitoring of struggling populations without corresponding support provision suggested monitoring functioned partly as documentation mechanism rather than as gateway to meaningful humanitarian intervention.
See Also
Voluntary Repatriation Refugee Return Programs Reintegration Assistance Refugee Welfare Humanitarian Monitoring Return Sustainability
Sources
-
"UNHCR Resettlement Handbook." UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/resettlement-handbook
-
"UNHCR Kenya Operational Update #9 (September 2023)." ReliefWeb. https://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/unhcr-kenya-operational-update-9-september-2023
-
"Kenya softens its position on proposed closure of Dadaab refugee camp." Goobjoog, April 30, 2015. https://goobjoog.com/