Shaping Norms: Australia, <scp>G.J.L.</scp> Coles, and the Evolution of the <scp>UN</scp> Refugee Agency's Repatriation Culture

The emergence in the 1990s of voluntary repatriation as a significant new norm in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) practice in refugee protection is often represented as something of an inevitability. Numerous scholars have suggested that the growth at UNHCR of a “repatriation culture” throughout the 1980s was principally the result of the increasing pressures of mass influx events alongside the challenges of dwindling resources and states' demands for durable solutions to successive refugee crises. In this article, we argue that these challenges offer only a partial explanation for UNHCR's turn from the cold war “exilic bias” of the international protection regime, towards the post‐cold war prioritisation of repatriation. We suggest that states such as Australia, deeply concerned with the long‐term outcomes of refugee flows in the late 1970s and 1980s, worked in tandem with key individuals who helped to shape the normative landscape of international protection. We identify GJL Coles as one such individual and offer a close analysis of his influence on key statements concerning voluntary repatriation throughout the 1980s. By making visible the entangled contributions of Australia and Coles, we add a hitherto missing strand to the story of how the “repatriation culture” at UNHCR, and the human rights discourse that accompanied it, emerged.