‘Disturbing the Work of the Office’: The Limits of Refugee Collective Action on ‘UNHCR Territory’ in Beirut

Abstract

There is a tension in the policy and practice of refugee presence in and around the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The core principle of direct accessibility to UNHCR is continuously balanced against other competing concerns. But what, in policy and practice, are these competing concerns? And at what point does the presence of refugees and other protection seekers become illegitimate from the perspective of UNHCR? Building on original empirical research, this article explores collective action by Sudanese protection seekers at UNHCR’s office in Beirut, Lebanon. It shows how the spatial practices of UNHCR influence its relationship with protection seekers, and how these relations intersect with broader dynamics of securitization. In Beirut, once a presence was considered to ‘disturb the work of the Office’, a more restrictive policy involving host state security was triggered. The article interrogates what it means to ‘disturb the work of the Office’ in the context of a heavily securitized city and spotlights the blocking of UNHCR entrance doors in Beirut as a pivotal example of when collective action is considered by UNHCR to be so disturbing that protection seekers are to be forcibly removed from UNHCR ‘territory’.