The African Refugee Crisis: The Need for Preventive Diplomacy

Abstract

The rapid and sustained increase in the refugees, numerical strength vis a vis the mandate of the United Nations High Commission for Refugee (UNHCR), has continued to steer the imagination of scholars and observers. The liberal theoretical approach has been adopted  because of its humanistic bent to examine the refugee crisis in Africa. It also employed the inter-disciplinary methods with data from  secondary sources. It was found that dealing with the root causes of the refugee problem was not the mandate of the UNHCR, rather, the  commission’s mandate was to cater for their welfare. Secondly, the UN refugee regime was not to seek a durable solution to the  refugee crisis in Africa. The proliferation of conflicts on the continent resulting from state failure is a major source of the refugee problem. The paper recommended dealing with state failure through preventive diplomacy, as the panacea to the refugee problem.