Coordination and Fair Division in Refugee Responsibility Sharing

• Author: Richard E Ericson,Lester A Zeager
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221080985
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(7-8) 1263–1291

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221080985

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Coordination and Fair

Division in Refugee

Responsibility Sharing

Richard E Ericson

1

and Lester A Zeager

1



Abstract

We analyze the problem of international responsibility sharing for a refugee group

seeking protection from the dangers of mass violence arising from inter-state conf‌lict

or the collapse of a fragile state. After reviewing several proposed solutions, we

characterize responsibility sharing as a coordination problem in a simple sequential

“moves”game between two potential host countries. We demonstrate that, ultimately,

the country that makes the f‌irst move to receive refugees bears a disproportionate

responsibility. We then draw on two historical case studies that illustrate the diff‌iculties

of coordinating a fair division of refugee responsibilities. To solve the coordination

problem, we adapt a fair division procedure by inverting one f‌irst presented by Hugo

Steinhaus for dividing “goods.”We demonstrate that the procedure is applicable to

costly “obligations”under different scenarios and is manipulation proof, as each

participating country has an obviously dominant strategy.

Keywords

refugees, responsibility sharing, coordination game, fair division, international

cooperation

1

Department of Economics, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Lester A Zeager, East Carolina University, Department of Economics, Brewster Building A-434, Greenville,

NC 27858-4353, USA.

Email: zeagerl@ecu.edu

“When the drafters of the United Nations’1951 Convention Relating to the Status of

Refugees mentioned in the document’s preamble the importance of ‘international co-

operation’in sharing the burdens created by refugee inf‌luxes, they could not possibly have

foreseen the magnitude that challenge would present to refugee scholars and practitioners

over the ensuing decades.”(Cook 2004, 334)

Introduction

Refugee responsibility sharing is a perennial challenge for the international community.

When countries see a crisis developing, they are reluctant to offer protection because it

raises the spectre of substantial costs and the fear of taking on more than their “fair”

share of the burden. Nonetheless, the vast suffering of refugees and the failure of the

international community to relieve it cry out for more imaginative thinking on potential

solutions.

More than two decades ago, Schuck (1994,1997) proposed an innovative solution:

arrange for some international agency to assign refugee protection quotas propor-

tionally to participating states—with the total number of quotas based on its assessment

of world refugee needs—but permit them to pay other states to fulf‌ill their obligations.

His solution would have created a market for trading refugee quotas

(i.e., responsibilities) and allowed the market to f‌ind an eff‌icient allocation of them.

Schuck (1997) noted that the U.S. Clean Air Act contained a related solution for

environmental protection—trading emission permits.

1

Solutions with some similarities

were proposed by Hathaway and Neve (1997) and Betts (2003).

These proposals raised concerns and elicited criticism from several directions.

Anker et al. (1998) questioned whether countries in either the global North or South

would honor their obligations to refugees under the incentives created by Shuck’s

proposal. In addition, they argued that bargaining over refugee obligations would

tend to weaken the norm of non-refoulement—not forcing refugees to return to face

a well-founded fear of persecution—and lead to refugees being treated like

commodities. Smith (2004, 149) says that, “The market for refugee quotas is simply

repugnant,”and likens it to wealthy parents hiring a mercenary to take their son’s

place in a universal military draft. He argues that even “debating the concept

debases one of the supreme accomplishments of international diplomacy,”referring

to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Smith’s criticism places the proposals by

Shuck and others among situations in which repugnance acts as a constraint on the

use of markets (Roth 2007).

Another possible solution for refugee burden sharing is two-sided matching

(Roth and Sotomayor 1992), which has improved the matches of new medical

doctors with residency programs, students with schools, and patients with donor

kidneys (Roth 2015). The mechanisms designed to f‌ind these matches have gen-

erated solutions where market transactions fail or are repugnant to people (e.g., the

sale of human organs). Several attempts have been made recently to apply similar

matching mechanisms to refugees and host countries (Fern´

andez-Huertas Moraga

1264 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(7-8)