'Quota refugees’: the Dutch contribution to global 'burden sharing' by means of resettlement of refugees

Abstract

The international refugee law regime that was created in the wake of the Second World War does not comprise distributive principles as a result of which geographical proximity functions as the primary distributive mechanism. The distribution of refugees is consequently unevenly shared among states, understandably giving rise to calls for burden sharing. Rather than states, UNHCR is charged with resettlement of refugees and it depends on the discretion of (too few) states to offer resettlement places. One of those states is the Netherlands, which has set an annual quota of 500 refugees (including their relatives) for resettlement. Dutch practice with respect to its ‘quota refugees’ appears to be illustrative of the current use of ‘resettlement’ as neither a form of burden sharing nor necessarily a durable solution for the problem of refugees. It invites to revisit the solution of ‘resettlement’ against the background of legal developments, state and UNHCR practice, using fuzzy logic as an analytical tool