African Refugee Women Theoretical

In the past five years, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of refu-gees worldwide, bringing their esti-mated total to more than seventeen million at the end of 1990. ' In Africa alone, more than 5.4 million people have been identified as refugees in 1990. The quest for durable solutions has remained a constant dilemma over the years, one whose resolution is complicated by the economic decline that has gripped the African continent for several years now, as well as the UNHCR budget crisis. In recent years, however, the search for durable solutions has undergone two main transformations: the implementa-tion of a refugee assistance and develop-ment (RAD) strategy and the organization of massive repatriations. In the mid-1980s, at a time of budget impasse, economic decline and donor compassion fatigue, international or-ganizations, governments of the coun-tries of first asylum and donors called for a reassessment of international refugee assistance and the effective linkage of refugee assistance and development. Since then, a number of RAD projects and programs have been implemented throughout the world. A more recent evolution in the search for durable solutions has been massive repatriation movements organized by the international community. The end of the Cold War allowed for the resolution of decades-long domestic or regional wars fuelled by superpower rivalries and for the repatriation of the refugees whose flight had been generated by these conflicts. The importance of these international developments requires an analysis from a gender perspective and an examination of their effects on refugee women2 Apb Callmnard is a visitingresearch scholar at th