THE OFFICE OF THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES AND THE SOURCES OF INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE LAW

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Operational Activities ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe role of international organisations in international law-making tends to be downplayed in this largely State-centric world. The practice of UNHCR, however, is reason enough for a more sophisticated appreciation of the role that operational entities can play in stimulating State practice, and of how they may interact with and guide domestic courts in treaty interpretation and application. The ILC's recently completed projects on customary international law and subsequent agreements and practice encourage a cautious approach, but the high degree of judicialisation in refugee decision-making, the strong legal content in the international protection regime and the impact of UNHCR's operational activities open the way for institutional and grass-roots developments, keeping the law in closer touch with social and political realities and with the needs of those displaced.

United Nations Treaty-Making

2019 ◽  
pp. 426-450
Author(s):  
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Humanitarian Relief ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Operational Activities ◽  
The Moment

Refugees, stateless persons, and those without protection were among the first international problems faced by the League of Nations, almost from the moment of its creation. Building on the practice of the League’s High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen, in securing agreement on issues such as identity and travel documents for those without or denied the nationality or protection of their country of origin, the United Nations took steps from its opening session onward to ensure protection and facilitate solutions. It established its own organizations and promoted a series of treaties on refugees, stateless persons, and statelessness, which to this day remains the basic international legal framework. States, in turn, have recognized that refugees (and now migration) are an international issue, and that no state should be expected to shoulder alone the responsibilities of admission, protection, and solutions. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly, is mandated to provide international protection, to assist governments in finding solutions, to promote treaties and agreements, and to supervise their application. UNHCR’s direct engagement with states and its worldwide operational activities contribute significantly to the consolidation of protection principles, such as non-refoulement and asylum, to the expansion of humanitarian relief for the displaced, and to the progressive development of customary international law. Recent displacement crises, protracted refugee situations, greater mobility, and a highly globalized and securitized environment will bring fresh challenges to an international protection regime with nearly one hundred years of law and organization behind it.

Part II Sources, Ch.13 Customary Refugee Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambert Hélène
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Refugee Convention ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Refugee Protection ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Treaty Law ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
To Receive

This chapter explores customary refugee law. Refugee law is primarily treaty law. However, many of the major refugee-receiving countries are not parties to either the Refugee Convention or the Refugee Protocol, for example Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon. Hence, customary international refugee law can be critically important in the identification of key principles of refugee protection and as an indication of what is permitted or not. While customary international law may not play as significant a role in refugee law as it does in other areas of international law, there are at least three practices of refugee protection aimed at safeguarding access and admission to refugee protection for which varying degrees of agreement exist in favour of a rule (or emerging rule) of customary law: non-refoulement, temporary refuge, and the right to be granted (to receive) asylum. These practices are deeply intertwined in their humanitarian purpose.

scholarly journals Regionalising International Refugee Law in the European Union: Democratic Revision or Revisionist Democracy?

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Jane McAdam
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
International Standards ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
The Eu

This paper questions whether the process of harmonisation of the European Union’s asylum laws has strengthened the region’s commitment to international law and international standards, or has instead diluted them in order to accommodate regional (and domestic "democratic") concerns about forced migration. Harmonisation has taken place in a political environment that is suspicious of asylum seekers, that seeks restrictive entrance policies and that is wary of large numbers of refugees. This paper argues that such factors have heavily influenced the scope of the common asylum laws – who is eligible for protection – and the rights to which beneficiaries are entitled – what that protection actually is. It looks in particular at the confinement of protection to "third country nationals", a restriction which contravenes the 1951 Refugee Convention and denies international protection to groups within the EU such as the Roma, whose discrimination is welldocumented and has historically led to many being recognised as refugees. Furthermore, the paper considers that the EU citizen’s right to free movement is not synonymous with a right to residence, and is especially complicated for nationals of the 12 new accession States. It argues that harmonisation has occurred at the expense of a comprehensive and systematic analysis of international law, responding instead to "democratic" political compromise and pragmatism.

On the Legality Under International Law of the Criminalization or Suppression of the Expression of Solidarity to Refugees

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 102-113
Author(s):  
Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
International Refugee Law

As Professor Jastram has noted, in and of itself, international refugee law is not explicit enough on the issue at hand. It is not clear enough in protecting persons who come in aid of, or show solidarity to, refugees or asylum-seekers. That does not mean, however, that no protections exist for them at all in other, if you like, sub-bodies of international law. This presentation focuses on the nature and character of those already existing international legal protections, as well as on any protection gaps that remain and recommendations on how they can be closed. It should be noted though that although the bulk of the presentation focuses on the relevant international legal protection arguments, this presentation begins with a short examination of the nature of the acts of criminalization and suppression at issue.

Part I International Refugee Law— Reflections on the Scholarly Field, Ch.2 Race, Refugees, and International Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tendayi Achiume E
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Role Of Religion

The experiences of refugees are heavily mediated by race and ethnicity, and international law plays a significant role in this mediation—in some cases offering important protections, and in others entrenching discrimination and exclusion. This Chapter makes four contributions. First, it articulates a structural and intersectional account of race, racial discrimination and xenophobic discrimination as essential starting points for international legal analysis of race and refugees. This analysis includes the overlap and distinctions between racial and xenophobic discrimination, as well as the role of religion, class and gender in shaping racial discrimination against refugees. Secondly, it reviews the doctrine on race and refugees in international refugee law and international human rights law, and maps the attendant academic literature analyzing this law. Thirdly, the Chapter canvasses legal scholarship that has examined the structure, history and development of the international refugee regime in relation to race. Finally, it concludes with reflections on a research agenda on race and refugees.

Part IV Access to Protection and International Responsibility-Sharing, Ch.29 Smuggling of Migrants and Refugees

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Schloenhardt Andreas
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
The Subject ◽  
International Responsibility ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International Refugee Law

This chapter focuses on the smuggling of migrants in the context of refugee movements, and examines the scope and application of international law pertaining to these phenomena. The principal binding global instrument on this topic is the United Nations Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air which, on the surface, coexists alongside international refugee law in situations where smuggled migrants are seeking asylum. Although the Smuggling of Migrants Protocol expressly recognizes the protection afforded to refugees under international law, its interpretation, operation, and implementation often run into conflict with the Refugee Convention. All too frequently, measures to prevent and combat the smuggling of migrants focus exclusively on law enforcement, criminal justice, and restrictive border measures without recognizing the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and smuggled migrants, which are the subject of this chapter.

Part II Sources, Ch.10 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milner James ◽  
Ramasubramanyam Jay
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
Refugee Convention ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
Over Time

This chapter addresses the role played by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the making and implementation of international refugee law. It begins by considering UNHCR’s mandate responsibilities and operational functions to better understand the structures that condition the scope of UNHCR’s engagement with the functioning of international law. While UNHCR’s 1950 Statute and the Refugee Convention both mandate UNHCR to serve particular functions, such as its supervisory responsibility relating to the Refugee Convention, its Statute also places particular constraints on UNHCR, especially in terms of the scope of its activities and its reliance on voluntary contributions from States to perform its mandated functions. The chapter then looks at how the roles UNHCR has played in the making and implementation of refugee law at the global, regional, and national levels, through its operations, and how these functions have evolved over time. By illustrating the various instances where UNHCR has demonstrated power, along with those instances where UNHCR has exhibited pathologies and has been constrained by the interests of States, the chapter points to the importance of understanding international refugee law within the political environment in which it functions.

Part IV Access to Protection and International Responsibility-Sharing, Ch.27 Extraterritorial Migration Control and Deterrence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gammeltoft-Hansen Thomas ◽  
Tan Nikolas Feith
Keyword(s):  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Protection ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
Global North ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
The Right

Extraterritorial migration control represents a fundamental challenge to refugees’ ability to access asylum. The right to seek asylum, pivotal to the international protection of refugees, almost always requires that an asylum seeker reach a State’s territory to access protection. This chapter charts the emergence and evolution of different forms of extraterritorial migration control over the past three decades which render this access to protection increasingly dangerous and elusive. Equally, the chapter shows that international refugee law has not remained static in this period. From dynamic developments in the interpretation of key tenets of refugee law to the wider turn to international human rights law and litigation, refugee lawyers have consistently challenged restrictive developments in State practice. However, legal responses to extraterritorial migration control cannot stop here. This chapter sketches out a topographical approach to accountability, cutting across different legal regimes, different levels of national, transnational, regional, and international law, and different jurisdictions in both the Global North and the Global South, to confront the challenges thrown up by contemporary extraterritorial migration control and deterrence.

scholarly journals ‘Quota Refugees’: The Dutch Contribution to Global ‘Burden Sharing’ by Means of Resettlement of Refugees

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjoleine Zieck
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Global Burden ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
World War ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
Second World

The international refugee law regime that was created in the wake of the Second World War does not comprise distributive principles as a result of which geographical proximity functions as the primary distributive mechanism. Consequently, the distribution of refugees is unevenly shared among states, understandably giving rise to calls for burden sharing. Rather than states, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (hereafter: UNHCR) is charged with resettlement of refugees and it depends on the discretion of (too few) states to offer resettlement places. One of those states is the Netherlands, which has set an annual quota of 500 refugees (including their relatives) for resettlement. Dutch practice with respect to its ‘quota refugees’ appears to be illustrative of the current use of ‘resettlement’ as neither a form of burden sharing nor necessarily a durable solution for the problem of refugees. It invites to revisit the solution of ‘resettlement’ against the background of legal developments, state and UNHCR practice, using fuzzy logic as an analytical tool.

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