Why Durable Solutions Remain Elusive: Constrained Humanitarianism and the Political Economy of Refugee Policy in Bangladesh

Despite decades of international policy development, durable solutions to protracted refugee displacement remain elusive. This article asks why, examining Bangladesh’s responses to the Rohingya influxes of 1991–1992 and 2017. It argues that the realisation of repatriation, local integration and third-country resettlement is conditioned not only by their institutional feasibility but by the political economy of host-state constraints. Through a qualitative structured comparison of the two episodes, the article develops the concept of constrained humanitarianism to explain how Bangladesh has calibrated humanitarian accommodation to economic capacity, security concerns, international pressure and domestic political and legal constraints. The comparison demonstrates a recurring pattern: expanded humanitarian protection can coexist with resistance to durable incorporation, while repatriation remains the principal long-term policy objective. This pattern suggests that durable-solution non-resolution is not simply an implementation deficit but can be reproduced through the interaction of host-state incentives and an international system in which protection costs remain concentrated nationally while responsibility-sharing remains uneven. The article therefore reframes durable-solution outcomes as politically mediated processes and highlights the structural importance of more equitable international responsibility-sharing.