Refugees and Host Country Nexus: a Case Study of Pakistan

The number of refugees in the world is on increase once again just like the 1990s. There is plentiful scholarly literature available on the nexus of refugees and host country. This particular study brings new insight into existing literature by focusing on Pakistan (the home of the second largest refugees by numbers) and employing the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to determine how refugees influence host country, and how these influences vary among various refugee populations in the very same country while considering opinions of local communities and organizations dealing with these refugees. At the same time, using last 15 years’ data, the study forecasts the refugee number that may repatriate by 2018 using exponential smoothing technique. The study is useful for policy makers dealing with refugees, such as UNHCR or governments of refugee-hosting countries, and local populations of the host countries, and to the greater general readers having interest in this area.