Safety, Subject to Approval: The Politics of Humanitarian Visas in South Asia
Humanitarian mobility in South Asia is governed less by refugee law than by foreign policy. States across this region hand out protection selectively; they do so by rewarding allies, signalling to rivals, and dodging inconvenient obligations, but the one tool that would make that protection transparent, the humanitarian visa, is precisely the tool they refuse to build.
The paradox is hard to miss. The region hosts millions of displaced people, from Afghans in Pakistan to the Rohingya in Bangladesh, yet almost no state runs a formal humanitarian visa programme. The usual debates fixate on asylum claims and overcrowded camps, while the visa, which is a legal pre-arrival route to safety, is hardly mentioned. So, if it offers exactly the managed protection governments say they want, why is it so rarely used? The answer is less institutional weakness than political choice: protection is extended case by case, tracking strategic interest rather than any universal principle.
Why the Visa is a Political Instrument
The International Organisation for Migration defines a humanitarian visa as “one granting access to and temporary stay in the issuing State for variable duration to a person on humanitarian grounds as specified in the applicable national or regional law, often aimed at complying with relevant human rights and refugee law” (IOM). The operative feature is timing since the visa is issued while the person is still outside the country. It lets the state decide who deserves protection; unlike asylum, claimed on or after arrival, which carries obligations, above all non-refoulement, that are hard to switch off. The visa hands the state full control of the gate: who applies, who qualifies, and when the category quietly closes.
That control is the point. The visa lets governments signal solidarity, reward friendly populations, or sidestep awkward commitments, all while looking generous. A standing regime would swap that flexibility for obligation, and most South Asian states would rather keep the flexibility.
India: Capacity Without Commitment
India is the clearest case, precisely because it has no refugee law and never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, yet has organised large-scale humanitarian admission again and again, on executive discretion alone.
When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, India took him in along with around 80,000 Tibetans, handing them land and self-run settlements across several states (Migration Policy Institute). Nehru openly framed the decision around three factors, only one of which was "deep sympathy for the people of Tibet"; the others were India's security and its relationship with China (The Wire). It was a welcome doubled as a strategic signal, and once Sino-Indian relations cooled, India quietly stopped recognising newly arriving Tibetans as refugees.
The pattern returned with Sri Lankan Tamils, who crossed the Palk Strait during the civil war into more than a hundred state-run camps in Tamil Nadu (Forced Migration Review). Again by fiat, not statute, and the discretion cut both ways: in 2025 the Supreme Court refused relief to a Tamil facing deportation, declaring India "not a dharamshala" (Deccan Herald).
Where geopolitics meets identity, the selectivity turns explicit. Within days of Kabul's fall in 2021, India rushed out an "e-Emergency X-Misc" visa for Afghans, but scoped it to those who "stood by India," (ThePrint). The Citizenship (Amendment) Act then fast-tracked citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Muslim minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh while pointedly excluding Muslims, and the Rohingya, reclassified as illegal migrants in 2017, with their long-term visas left to lapse (Refugees International).
India plainly has the capacity to admit people on humanitarian grounds; its refusal to codify it is a preference for discretionary control over legal obligation.
Bangladesh: Protection Without a Pathway
Bangladesh hosts one of the world's largest refugee populations, yet almost none of the roughly one million Rohingya arrived on a humanitarian visa. They came through mass emergency admission, into camps, under tight limits on movement, work and schooling (International Crisis Group).
The missing pathway is itself the policy. A visa would imply lawful, recognised admission, and Dhaka has been careful never to concede permanence, instead insisting that repatriation to Myanmar is the "only durable solution" (Al Jazeera). Calling the Rohingya temporary guests pressures Myanmar, reassures voters they won't settle, and sets no precedent. The tolerance is real; the legal status is deliberately withheld.
Pakistan: From Host to Security
Pakistan sheltered Afghans for over four decades, but mostly through temporary registration and tolerated presence, not humanitarian visas. That displacement was always tangled up with security and regional politics, so refugees' legal standing rose and fell with the political weather rather than any fixed law.
How fast it can invert is now on display. Under the 2023 "Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan," Islamabad moved to expel Afghans, including holders of UNHCR-issued Proof of Registration cards (Amnesty International), deporting tens of thousands within weeks as security rhetoric swallowed the humanitarian one (Al Jazeera). Decades of refuge offered no legal floor the moment the politics turned.
The Pattern:
Three countries, three different tactics: inclusion, tolerance, expulsion, but one shared instinct: never let protection harden into a right. Each government offers refuge on its own terms and keeps the power to withdraw it, which is exactly what a humanitarian visa would take away. The empty space where that visa should be is not an oversight. It is the policy working as intended.
That is what makes the coming decade the real test. As climate displacement, conflict and instability deepen across South Asia, humanitarian mobility will only grow, and a system built on discretion tends to tighten, not open, under pressure. Refuge in South Asia will stay a favour that the states grant and revoke instead of being a rule that binds them when the politics turn, and the cost of that choice will fall, as it already does, on the people with the least say over it.