George was followed home. As he reached for his keys to his apartment in Tel Aviv, he was startled by a voice from behind.

“Pack your belongings,” a policeman ordered, informing him he had a week to return to South Sudan or be detained indefinitely in Israel.

George had originally fled South Sudan for Egypt during the Second Sudanese Civil War in the 1980s. He failed to find secure protection in Egypt and so crossed the Sinai Desert in 2008, entering Israeli territory with the help of smugglers. Like 60,000 other asylum seekers who had crossed over, George could not apply for refugee status or legally work as of 2012.

As the policeman drove away, George called OBI. He asked for help returning to South Sudan, and was given a free flight home and travel documentation. By 2012, nearly all South Sudanese in Israel had repatriated via similar means.

It is against international law to indefinitely detain asylum seekers without first establishing if they are refugees. What is less obvious is whether organizations like OBI should help individuals return to avoid such detention.

The UN claims it should. Over the last three decades, it has assisted over ten million refugees repatriate, many from detention, and many more from enclosed camps. It helps because, even if governments detain refugees or force them into enclosed camps, the UN is using no coercion itself, and is helping refugees obtain freedom through repatriation. It is analogous, one could claim, to civil servants clandestinely helping individuals flee persecuting regimes. During the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust, such civil servants were celebrated as helping individuals escape injustices. Of course those who fled were coerced; that is why it was commendable to help them.

Yet, unlike fleeing from danger to safety, refugees who return home may be trading one injustice for another. In this case, “repatriation facilitators,” including NGOs and UN agencies, cannot normally justify their actions by appealing to the outcomes of return. In this eventuality, NGOs have justified their assistance by reference to refugees’ consent. But it is unclear if there is consent, given the presence of coercion.

In the following section I will describe one version of this dilemma, which I call the “Coercion Dilemma.” Coercion Dilemmas occur when facilitators help with coerced returns without causally contributing to the coercion.