The growing tendency toward non-compliance with international obligations to refugees requires UNHCR to make contingency plans for asylum denials. Making such plans calls for tools, such as game theory and confrontation analysis, that link non-compliance in refugee asylum with the configuration of interests for asylum and donor countries in a potential crisis. We illustrate such tools in a case study of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 1997-2001, which generated asylum denials by Pakistan ranging from brief border closings to threats of mass refoulement, linked to the withholding of assistance by the United States and other donors. We also consider the prospects for using these tools to inform contingency planning for an impending crisis. © 2006 Oxford University Press.

Asylum Afghan refugees Confrontation analysis Game theory Theory of moves

international migration South Asia Pakistan Eurasia Asia refugee international aid asylum seeker crisis management North America United States