Realising the Right of Return: Refugees’ Roles in Localising Norms and Socialising UNHCR

The 1948 Nakba has, in light of the 1993 Oslo Accords and Palestinian refugee activists' mobilisation around the right of return, taken on a new-found centrality and importance in Palestinian refugee communities. Closely-related to this, members of the ‘Generation of Palestine’, the only individuals who can recollect Nakba memories, have come to be seen as the guardians of memories that are eventually to reclaim the homeland. These historical, social and political realities are deeply rooted in the ways in which the few remaining members of the generation of Palestine recollect 1948. Moreover, as members of communities that were destroyed in Palestine, and whose common and temporal and spatial frameworks were non-linearly constituted anew in Syria, one of the multiples meanings of the Nakba today can be found in the way the refugee communities perceive and define this generation.

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The Right of Return

Journal of Palestine Studies ◽

10.1525/jps.1980.9.3.00p0226g ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 125-136

Author(s):

W. Thomas Mallison ◽

Sally V. Mallison

Keyword(s):

Right Of Return ◽

The Right

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Observations on the Right of Return

Journal of Palestine Studies ◽

10.1525/jps.1992.21.2.00p00876 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 29-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Rashid I. Khalidi

Keyword(s):

Right Of Return ◽

The Right

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The Denial of the Right of Return as a Rome Statute Crime

Journal of International Criminal Justice ◽

10.1093/jicj/mqaa053 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Micheal G Kearney

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

International Criminal Court ◽

Rome Statute ◽

Final Section ◽

International Criminal ◽

Trial Chamber ◽

Criminal Court ◽

Central Importance ◽

Right Of Return ◽

The Right

Abstract In 2018, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) held that conduct preventing the return of members of the Rohingya people to Myanmar could fall within Article 7(1)(k) of the Statute, on the grounds that denial of the right of return constitutes a crime against humanity. No international tribunal has prosecuted this conduct as a discrete violation, but given the significance of the right of return to Palestinians, it can be expected that such an offence would be of central importance should the ICC investigate the situation in Palestine. This comment will review the recognition of this crime against humanity during the process prompted by the Prosecutor’s 2018 Request for a ruling as to the Court’s jurisdiction over trans-boundary crimes in Bangladesh/Myanmar. It will consider the basis for the right of return in general international law, with a specific focus on the Palestinian right of return. The final section will review the elements of the denial of right of return as a crime against humanity, as proposed by the Office of the Prosecutor in its 2019 Request for Authorization of an investigation in Bangladesh/Myanmar.

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Unfulfilled Promise: Palestinian Family Reunification and the Right of Return

Journal of Palestine Studies ◽

10.1525/jps.2016.45.3.24 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 24-39

Author(s):

Nabila El-Ahmed ◽

Nadia Abu-Zahra

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Family Reunification ◽

The State ◽

Early Years ◽

Successor State ◽

Palestinian Refugees ◽

Right Of Return ◽

The Family ◽

The Creation ◽

The Right

This article argues that Israel substituted the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return with a family reunification program during its maneuvering over admission at the United Nations following the creation of the state in May 1948. Israel was granted UN membership in 1949 on the understanding that it would have to comply with legal international requirements to ensure the return of a substantial number of the 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed in the process of establishing the Zionist state, as well as citizenship there as a successor state. However, once the coveted UN membership had been obtained, and armistice agreements signed with neighboring countries, Israel parlayed this commitment into the much vaguer family reunification program, which it proceeded to apply with Kafkaesque absurdity over the next fifty years. As a result, Palestinians made refugees first in 1948, and later in 1967, continue to be deprived of their legally recognized right to return to their homes and their homeland, and the family reunification program remains the unfulfilled promise of the early years of Israeli statehood.

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The Law of Return and the Right of Return

An Introduction to International Refugee Law ◽

10.1163/9789004226166_013 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 291-318

Keyword(s):

Right Of Return ◽

The Law ◽

The Right ◽

Law Of Return

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Kerrottu ja muisteltu inkerinsuomalaisten paluumuutto

Elore ◽

10.30666/elore.78986 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Minna-Liisa Salonsaari

Keyword(s):

Soviet Union ◽

Former Soviet Union ◽

Life Stories ◽

Transition Period ◽

Point Of View ◽

Practical Work ◽

Individual Life ◽

Right Of Return ◽

The Right ◽

Unique Part

The remigration of the Ingrian Finns and other ethnic Finns from the territories of the former Soviet Union is a unique part of Finnish history. Ever since the beginning of the right of return established in 1990, about 30 000 returnees and their family members have moved to Finland. According to the amendments of the Aliens Act introduced in July 2011, remigration is supposed to end after the transition period. In her article Salonsaari writes about the narrated and remembered remigration of the Ingrian Finns. She deals with remigration issues through the interviews with two returnees. In her own concept of narrated remigration, she regards the presentations of the remigration experience as narrations, created, for example, within the framework of interviews. Interviews produce individual life stories focused on remigration experience. While analysing them, she discusses what kind of narrations they are and how remigration comes up. Those narrations show that there are different kinds of remigrations and remigration experiences, as well as different ways to narrate them. Narrated remigration includes, for example, meaning, turning points and interpretations on remigration experience. Salonsaari notes that, while listening to remigration narrations, it is possible to understand the returnees’ point of view, which can be used in practical work with the immigrants.

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The persistence of the right of return

Politics Philosophy & Economics ◽

10.1177/1470594x17736265 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 375-399 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Victor Tadros

Keyword(s):

Self Determination ◽

Current Generation ◽

Right Of Return ◽

Significant Interest ◽

Security Costs ◽

The Right ◽

Do So

This article defends the right that Palestinians have to return to the territory governed by Israel. However, it does not defend the duty on Israel to permit return. Whether there is such a duty depends on whether the economic, social and security costs override that right. In order to defend the right of return, it is shown both that the current generation of Palestinians retain a significant interest in return, and that insofar as their interests are diminished, their rights are not diminished proportionally. The interests of Jewish Israelis in excluding the Palestinians are then considered. Their rights of self-determination, it is argued, do not powerfully favour excluding the Palestinians. The economic, social and security costs may do so. Overall, I conclude that either the Israel should grant return to the Palestinians or it should properly acknowledge the right of return and respond appropriately through a powerful effort to compensate and resettle them.

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