The repatriation of refugees is now being promoted as a more effective response to the refugee problem than asylum, the director of the refugee studies programme at Oxford University, Dr Barbara Harrell Bond, said in Dublin last night.
Giving a public lecture hosted by the Irish School of Ecumenics, Dr Harrell Bond said that over the past two decades governments had spent much time devising new ways of preventing refugees gaining asylum, while being careful to be seen to be acting in accord with humanitarian principles.