Is There a Duty to Repatriate in International Law?

As thousands of foreign nationals stranded in Iran and Israel wait for repatriation flights, governments are scrambling to find safe ways to evacuate them. With airspace closed, land border crossings limited, and evacuation routes posing dangers, many people remain stuck. In addition to these obvious logistical challenges, the capacity of governments to repatriate their nationals varies considerably. Some States have considerable resources and a consular presence on the ground, or can rely on cooperative agreements—such as the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism—to help get their nationals out. By contrast, other States may lack the resources or, in some cases, the political will to repatriate their people.

While foreign nationals often assume that their government will evacuate them in a crisis, international law offers no clear obligation for States to repatriate their nationals during emergencies abroad. Even so, longstanding State practice and evolving human rights jurisprudence suggest that governments should act, although action is often uneven and arbitrary.

Discretion over Duty

Repatriation is often framed as a discretionary power of States. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations grants States the right to assist their nationals abroad but does not impose a duty to do so (Article 5). Consular assistance—issuing travel documents, liaising with local authorities, and facilitating communication—is central to repatriation efforts, but largely depends on the actions of each State.

Conversely, international humanitarian law does not explicitly recognize the right of individuals to be repatriated by their home State during armed conflict. Foreign nationals have the right to leave a territory at the onset or during armed conflict ‘unless their departure is contrary to the national interests of the State’. However, this right to leave does not equate to a duty for States to repatriate their citizens.

There is no general right of repatriation under international human rights law either. Article 12(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that individuals have the right to leave any country, while Article 12(4) affirms that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter their own country. However, the latter provision has generally been interpreted as a prohibition on exile or denial of entry, rather than as a positive obligation to be extracted from emergencies abroad.

States do, however, have certain positive obligations in this context. The Human Rights Committee has made clear that the right to freedom of movement (including the right to leave any country) may not be made dependent on any specific purpose and includes the right to obtain necessary travel documents. The right to liberty, too, may be violated by the cumulative effects of restrictions on freedom of movement. That said, while States are required to facilitate their nationals’ freedom of movement, these obligations do not yet amount to a duty to repatriate them during emergencies.

An Emerging Obligation?

Despite the framing of repatriation as a discretionary power, there is emerging authority to suggest that States may have a duty to repatriate people in exceptional circumstances. Under international human rights law, a general duty to evacuate may arise from States’ fundamental obligation to protect the right to life. Where a real and foreseeable risk to life exists, and less invasive measures will not avert the risk of harm, evacuating people may be necessary. While a strict interpretation of jurisdictional principles suggests that this duty does not extend to nationals abroad—unless the State of nationality exercises authority and control over them, or effective control over the territory within they reside—courts and UN human rights bodies have progressively moved beyond this narrow interpretation. They have accepted that States have certain obligations to protect their nationals abroad when they are subjected to significant human rights violations. However, they have conflicting views on the extent to which these obligations may make States responsible for the repatriation of nationals abroad, particularly where they are subject to significant human rights violations.

In HF and Others v France, relatives of French nationals detained in Kurdish-run camps in Syria argued that France had a duty to repatriate them under Article 3(2) of Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to enter national territory). The European Court of Human Rights stopped short of accepting this argument, stating that ‘French citizens being held in the camps in north-eastern Syria cannot claim a general right to repatriation on the basis of the right to enter national territory’ (para. 259). Nonetheless, the court held that States owe certain obligations to their nationals abroad, such as implementing appropriate safeguards against arbitrariness in decisions regarding repatriation (paras. 272–84).

In contrast, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has adopted a more expansive view. In cases brought against France and Finland, the Committee found that a failure to repatriate children from Syrian detention camps where the living conditions were dire—marked by malnutrition, violence, and lack of access to education and healthcare—violated their rights to life and protection from inhuman or degrading treatment. In these decisions, the Committee appeared to support an implicit duty to repatriate in situations where nationals face grave human rights violations overseas.

Similarly, the Committee against Torture has found that States’ obligation in Article 2 of the Convention against Torture (CAT) ‘to take positive measures to effectively prevent torture and ill-treatment’ may in some cases require repatriation—namely, if a State is aware that a citizen is at risk of serious human rights violations and that State ‘is capable of taking action’ in this way (para. 7.5).

 State Practice

In addition to developments in human rights jurisprudence, State practice increasingly feeds the expectation that governments will assist their nationals with their return home during emergencies. In practice, consular services are essential for enabling repatriation, assuming that consular relations exist between the relevant States. These services may include communicating advice on how to return home, assisting with emergency travel documentation, and arranging commercial flights, or, in some cases, chartering aircraft or other transport for evacuation. However, repatriating people may be operationally complex, as exemplified by the current situation in Iran and Israel. Emergencies can disrupt consular services and communications infrastructure, making identifying and communicating with nationals abroad particularly challenging. Moreover, logistical challenges—such as the closure of roads, borders, or airspace—can severely limit or eliminate options for safe departure.

In more extreme scenarios, particularly those involving armed conflict where there are imminent threats to life, States have conducted Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations (NEOs). These are military-assisted operations used to extract civilians from hostile environments, often involving the deployment of armed forces. Some recent examples include large-scale evacuations of foreign nationals from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, from Sudan during the civil war that began in 2023, and from Lebanon during the 2024 Israeli–Hezbollah conflict. The current Israel–Iran conflict has not (yet) triggered full-scale NEOs.

NEOs typically require the consent of the State from where the evacuation takes place. However, some have argued that they can be justified under the doctrine of the protection of nationals abroad, which asserts that States have the right to protect their nationals abroad, using force if necessary. State practice on the doctrine is inconsistent, and there is no consensus on its acceptance as customary international law. Nonetheless, there appears to be growing support for the use of NEOs to remove foreign nationals from conflicts. Since the end of the Cold War, States have deployed military forces to assist in the evacuation of their nationals without significant protest from other States. In addition, an increasing number of States have adopted formal national doctrines on NEOs, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia (whose doctrine is not publicly available).

 Selective Repatriation

These developments have amplified the expectation that people will be aided to return home in a crisis. However, this expectation is unevenly applied and deeply shaped by geopolitical and resource inequalities, contributing to a troubling arbitrariness in who is evacuated and who is left behind.

In many cases, the evacuation of nationals is operationally complex. The ability of a State to respond to emergencies abroad and evacuate its nationals is often contingent on its diplomatic reach, logistical capacity, and financial resources. These factors reveal and reinforce systemic inequalities: where wealthier States can often mobilize the necessary resources for repatriation, States with limited resources often struggle to repatriate their nationals at all. The result is a system where access to safety is not determined by need, but by nationality and the capacity of one’s government to act.

Indeed, it is nationality that plays ‘a key factor in shaping powerful and highly uneven propensities-to-be-evacuated’. This not only creates differential treatment between foreign nationals, but also between foreign nationals and local populations. As one scholar has observed, evacuations tend to prioritize bringing home ‘foreigners perceived to be out of place’, whereas local populations are expected to remain and be protected ‘at home’.  It also highlights how repatriation as a crisis response prioritizes one crisis—the presence of the nationals of a State in an emergency—over the crisis of the emergency itself. This selective framing of crisis not only makes visible structural inequalities, but also the current limits of international law in protecting people.