On Friday 13 December, Professor Alexander Betts gave a lecture titled ‘Authoritarian Sanctuaries: Refugee Politics in East Africa’ as part of the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Lecture Series for 2024. The discussant was Arbie Baguios and the chair was Dr Laura Mann. Read what MSc students Sattrawut Bunruecha and Mohammed Malin took away from the lecture below.

You can watch the lecture back on YouTube or listen to the podcast.

In 2016, after the Brexit referendum sent shockwaves across the UK, immigration and refugees became hot-button topics.  The world was faced with the rising tide of far-right populism, a spectre that has only grown more menacing since then.  It was during this time that I came across Professor Alexander Betts’ TED Talk. Little did I know that 8 years later, I would find myself in the Old Building, attending my final lecture of the Autumn term where Betts presented his upcoming research. 

Betts’ upcoming publication, co-authored with Dr Julia Schweers, is based on extensive archival work and lived experiences of refugees, tackling a perplexing paradox: why do certain authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states in East Africa, like Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda, sometimes offer safe havens or “authoritarian sanctuaries”, in Betts’ words, for refugees? Cold War era dictators, like Mengistu Haile Mariam, Juvenal Habyarimana, Gaafar Nimeiry and Idi Amin, surprisingly adopted hospitable policies that were welcoming to refugees. And the legacy of these liberal frameworks, like Uganda’s self-reliance model, continues to influence contemporary refugee discourse and humanitarian frameworks. In stark contrast, countries heralded as bastions for their democratic values have grown more antagonistic towards refugees and immigrants. Betts explains this paradox. He posits authoritarian regimes face considerably fewer political repercussions for hosting refugees. Far less preoccupied with domestic dissent, these regimes utilise refugee policies strategically to accrue economic, political and military gains.  

But here’s where I started to question the limitations of Betts’ proposition. Can it be extended beyond East African and Cold War contexts? Take for example Thailand under the dictatorship of Prayut Chan-o-cha. The country refused entry to Rohingya asylum seekers escaping religious persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. A 2013 Reuters investigation uncovered that Thailand was secretly deporting these refugees into human trafficking rings. Prayut himself once remarked, “No one wants them. Everyone wants a transit country like us to take responsibility. Is it fair?” The recent Thai case could highlight the limitations of this explanation. Factors like national politics, intra-regional relations and the absence of a national legal framework for refugee management, which is often hijacked as justifications for both authoritarian and “democratic” governments, may distinguish one regime from another in its approach to refugee issues.  

Arbie Baguios’ questions to Betts were thought-provoking. Arbie Baguios prompts us to reassess the ideals of liberal humanitarianism, democratic values and the logic of the free market, concepts stemming from the Global North. This invites us to further examine a glaring contradiction: why does the Global North advocate for refugee rights and provide humanitarian aid abroad, yet simultaneously deny these very same individuals to cross their borders? 

Perhaps the talk’s conclusion offered a potential key to addressing this question. Betts reminded us that the greatest threat to refugees today is democratic backsliding. Politicians, both in the Global North and South, continue to exploit refugee issues as political tools. As I look forward to reading Betts’ upcoming publication, I am eager to see how it will offer cutting-edge approaches that can be appropriated beyond East African authoritarian contexts. 

Sattrawut Bunruecha

The reasons why refugees flee their homes are widely known; war, violence, persecution, hunger, and more. However, understanding why states accept refugees is more complicated. To help us understand this, Alexander Betts from the University of Oxford was invited to give the final talk for the Cutting-Edge lecture series. The lecture specifically focused on explaining why authoritarian governments welcome refugees by using four East African authoritarian states as examples: Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam, Rwanda under Juvenal Habyarimana, Sudan under Ja’far Nimeiri, and Uganda under Idi Amin.  

Betts highlighted that authoritarian regimes host most of the world’s refugees and also have the most progressive refugee policies. He borrowed the term ”illiberal paradox” from Katharina Natter to name this phenomenon where illiberal states have liberal refugee policies.  The main question of the lecture was why does this paradox exist? Why do states that are known for their disregard for the human rights of their citizens welcome refugees and give them socio-economic rights? The answer that Betts gave was that these governments use refugees as tools to gain followers, weapons, and money; followers to balance against domestic opposition, weapons meaning to use refugees for geopolitical reasons such as destabilising neighbouring states, and money to further strengthen their regimes.   

Betts showed that the Ugandan president, Idi Amin, welcomed Rwandan refugees to balance against other ethnic groups in Uganda to maintain the survival of his regime. He recruited them in the military, intelligence, and as civil servants to the extent that some of his minister cabinets had Rwandese Backgrounds. He also highlighted how the Ethiopian regime led by Mengistu welcomed refugees with liberal refugee policies from Sudan and Somalia, but the motives were destabilising both countries, whereas Sudan did the same also welcoming refugees from Ethiopia and implementing liberal refugee policies, to use Ethiopian refugees to destabilise Ethiopia. 

The lecture had a particular interest for me because this ”illiberal paradox” caused the civil war in my country Somalia in 1991. As mentioned, the Mengistu government in Ethiopia welcomed refugees from Somalia who fled persecution from the Siad Barre regime. The Ethiopian government then helped the refugees to form rebel groups and armed them to oppose the regime. It was these rebel groups that entered the country in the late 1980s and eventually toppled the government leading to the devastating civil war. This shows that the ”illiberal paradox” regarding refugees has long-term negative consequences for countries and regions.  

Betts ended his talk by emphasising the importance of the international community and international institutions such as the UNHCR in understanding the motives of governments accepting refugees, before entering deals with these governments or celebrating their liberal refugee policies. This is true for Western governments entering deals with states such as the Rwanda Asylum Plan between the United Kingdom and Rwanda and the Uganda Asylum Plan between the Netherlands and Uganda; two countries that have a rich history of using refugees for political or geopolitical motives. As most of the world’s refugees are in authoritarian states and are likely to host refugees for illiberal motives, and given the impact they could have on the stability of countries and regions, it is highly imperative in our contemporary world how the international community and their institutions approach the refugee question in authoritarian states.  

Mohammed Malin

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Featured image credit: LSE Department of International Development