Citation

Rietveld G, van Wijk J, Bolhuis MP. Crime Law Soc. Change 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10611-020-09932-z

PMID

33840902

Abstract

Against the backdrop of countries increasingly being confronted with undesirable but unreturnable non-citizen terrorist suspects, this article describes the resettlement process of 150 cleared but unreturnable Guantanamo Bay detainees. Merely 13% of these detainees have been resettled in full democracies, compared to 52% in authoritarian regimes. Using Starkley et al.'s concept of 'zone agreement' the article explains how the U.S. particularly managed to incentivize pragmatically oriented - rather than idealistically motivated - governments to engage in third country resettlement [16]. From the perspective of the U.S. the resettlement scheme can be considered relatively successful, while the experiences of resettlement countries and the resettled detainees themselves have been very mixed.

Language: en