Refugees

PGT Human Rights and Global Politics

 Today’s class
1. Short history of refugee status
2. The refugee regime
3. Durable solutions
 Precursors to UN regime
• Nansen passports
created by League of
Nations High
Commissioner for
Refugees (1922): Issued
by category, states
accord recognition but
no obligation to receive
• Emphasis on voluntary
repatriation and
resettlement
 Precursors to UNHCR
• International Refugee
Organisation (IRO) 1948:
temporary,
intergovernmental UN agency
• Refugees “victims of Nazi,
fascist, or similar regimes; of
persecution for reasons of
race, religion, nationality,
political opinion; and
refugees of long standing”
(Barnett 2002)
• Shift from definition by
category > individual
 Refugee regime
• UNHCR: Established Jan
1, 1951
• 1951 Convention and
1967 Protocol
• 1969 OAU Convention
• 1984 OAS Cartagena
Declaration
 Documents: What is a refugee?
• 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of
Refugees; 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of
Refugees
• “owing to a well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, or membership of a particular group
or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear,
unwilling, to avail himself of the protection of
that country”
UNHCR 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status
of Refugees
• Waived temporal and
geographic limitations
that obstructed
expansion of definition
in post-WW years
• More universal
application (i.e. no
longer just Europeans
involved in events pre-
1951) (Sztucki, 1999)
 Features of the Convention
• Guarantees right to seek asylum but not right
to obtain asylum
• Recognised permanence of refugee issue
• Individual-orientated
• Focus on causes of flight not category/group
• Territorial emphasis: outside country =
operations of international organisations
having respect for state sovereignty
 Elements of legal refugeehood
• Crossed an international • What about those
border fleeing war?
• Fleeing prosecution • What about those not
• Identity crossed international
• Cannot receive border?
protection
 War
• Changing nature of conflict: internal,
protracted, complex
• “New wars”: “tend to spread and to persist or
recur as each side gains in political or
economic ways from violence itself rather
than ‘winning’…[and] contribute to the
dismantling of the state” (Kaldor, 2013)
• Persecution in context of war?
 1969 OAU Refugee Convention
“Every person who, owing to
external aggression,
occupation, foreign
domination or events
seriously disturbing public
order in either part or the
whole of his place of habitual
residence in order to seek
refuge in another place outside
his country of origin or
nationality”
 OAS Cartagena Declaration 1984
“persons who have fled their
country because their lives,
safety or freedom have been
threatened by generalized
violence, foreign aggression,
internal conflicts, massive
violation of human rights or
other circumstances which
have seriously disturbed the
public order”
 Borders
• Internally Displaced Persons Out of 63.9 million
people that UNHCR
• “persons or groups of persons who
calls "persons of
have been forced or obliged to flee concern" — refugees,
or to leave their homes or places of asylum-seekers, IDPs,
habitual residence, in particular as a stateless individuals
result of or in order to avoid the and others — 37.5
million were IDPs in
effects of armed conflict, situations
2015.
of generalized violence, violations of
human rights or natural or human-
made disasters, and who have not
crossed an internationally State
recognized border”
– African Union Convention for the
Protection and Assistance of Internally
Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala
Convention), 22 October 2009
 IDP documents
• UN Guiding Principles • No new legal status
1998 created – have rights of
• San Jose Declaration citizens of state
1994 • No forcible
return/resettlement
• Kampala Convention
• Families reunited
2012
• Women: participation in
food/supplies; access to
reproductive health;
documents in own names
 Definition vs UNHCR in practice
• “displaced persons”, • ‘cluster lead’ in IDP
including IDPs since 1972 situations, coordinating
in Sudan other actors
• Dealt with wider
definition in 1970s,
Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam = long-term
care in refugee camps,
permanent settlement
potentially far from
cause
 Who is responsible for refugees?
• States: (1) asylum and (2) burden sharing
• UN High Commissioner for Refugees
• Increasingly non-governmental organisations
(Betts)
 Refugee “durable” solutions
• Resettlement (in another state)
• Integration (interim host state)
• Repatriation (country of origin)
 Seminar
• New York Declaration 2016
• Does the Convention definition need to be
revised?