In 2003, a young Ethiopian refugee named Milka was nervous about her security in Sudan, but afraid to return to Ethiopia. She instead paid smugglers to take her to Israel, where she remained for over a decade, unable to apply for refugee status. Nine years later, tired of living without legal status, she considered returning to Ethiopia.

As Milka was trying to decide, an Israeli member of Knesset stepped onto a podium in South Tel Aviv. Before thousands of anti-immigrant protesters, Miri Regev declared that Africans were “a cancer in our society,” and the government should do everything possible to encourage refugees to leave. Soon after, Israel’s Ministry of Interior began offering money to refugees and migrants agreeing to quit the country. Milka was told she could receive a free flight and $14,000 if she left. She accepted the offer, hoping to start a restaurant in Ethiopia.

When Milka was paid to leave Israel, she became part of a global trend of governments paying refugees to leave. In 2007, the Swedish government provided $7,150 to families agreeing to repatriate to Afghanistan. A year later, the Ghanaian government, working with the U.N., gave refugees $100 to return to Liberia. Soon after, Denmark began offering $18,700 to anyone returning to Iraq, Iran or Somalia.

In 2010 the British National Party (BNP), in an election campaign, promised to give $78,000 to non-whites in Britain, including refugees, who agreed to leave the country. In theory a family of six would receive around half a million dollars to return to Iraq. The BNP was never elected, but in 2011 the U.K. government handed over $3,500 in cash to families agreeing to return to Zimbabwe.

Three years later, then Australian prime minister Tony Abbott proposed paying asylum seekers $10,000 to go back to their countries of origin. Last year the German government, in response to protests against the influx of refugees, began paying up to $6,540 to those returning to Iraq. In all of these cases, and many more, a large proportion of those returning are refugees.

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