Refugees as Warriors: Was Militarization a Choice?
Open AccessMilitarization as a process has influenced various refugee groups throughout the 20th and 21st century as refugees see little future for themselves. The militarizing process revolves around three factors that influence refugees to differing degrees around the globe. The factor of origin goals which is shaped by the reason for flight and how refugees want to return shape their disposition towards using violence as a means forward. The relationship with the state that hosts the refugee population shapes how the structures of militarization and how they are directed, either internally in the host or externally to the country from which the refugees fled. Finally, the ability to accumulate resources from international humanitarian organizations or friendly states forms the ability of militarizing acts to occur. Using the cases of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon during the 1970s, Afghan refugees in Pakistan throughout the 1980s and Rwandan refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1994-96 to show these factors as both enabling and driving refugee militarization enables a better understanding of how we can prevent or diminish episodes like these occurring in the future.
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