Regional Human Rights Law

Author(s):  
Marina Sharpe

Chapter 5 begins with a review of the literature on the relationship between international human rights law and international refugee law, which charts the evolution of human rights in refugee protection. Section C then goes on to address regional human rights law, beginning with the African Charter overall, followed by its provisions of particular relevance to refugees, in terms of both non-refoulement and asylum and rights during exile. This is followed by surveys of relevant aspects of the Women’s Protocol and the Children’s Charter. Having articulated the human rights component of the regional legal regime for refugee protection, section D then goes on to analyse how it interacts with regional refugee law. A final section concludes.

Author(s):  
Lester Eve

This chapter explores how national constitutional frameworks add a critical dimension to refugee protection. Given the variability in the protective value of national constitutions for refugees, it considers how States draw strength from their constitutions in response to refugee movements and why they do so in particular ways. The chapter seeks to elucidate some of the complexities in the relationship between constitutional law and international refugee and human rights law, considering the relevance of constitutional text and context, State perspectives on the place of international law, and the extent to which constitutional law has shaped, and continues to shape, international law. The chapter offers a taxonomy as a methodological framework for differentiating these complexities, which suggests that the relationship between constitutional law and international refugee law might be understood in one of three ways: as symbiotic, ambivalent, or antagonistic. It then applies this framework to three case studies. It suggests that this approach may help us to think more strategically about how to harness the protective possibilities of constitutional law as well as wrestle more productively with constitutional law’s limitations.


Author(s):  
Alice Edwards

This chapter first explains the purpose and scope of international refugee law. It then identifies the five fundamental elements of the Refugee Convention, and discusses other important parameters of international refugee law more broadly. The chapter explores the relationship between international refugee law and human rights law at the macro-level. It analyses specific aspects of refugee law—namely, the definition of a refugee, the prohibition of refoulement, refugee rights, and the ending of refugee status and solutions—and analyses how international human rights law informs them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-378
Author(s):  
Carmelo Danisi

In the last decades, international refugee law (‘IRL’) and international human rights law (‘IHRL’) have increasingly taken into account sexual minorities’ needs. Despite not being one of the grounds of persecution under the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, sexual orientation has been identified as a relevant factor for the recognition of refugee status for more than twenty years. In parallel, IHRL has evolved to a point where sexual minorities are more fully included within the scope of rights and freedoms set forth in universal and regional human rights treaties, especially via the prohibition of discrimination. Yet, strange as it may seem, this simultaneous evolution has not always led to a fruitful intersection between IRL and IHRL, even in terms of interpretation despite what the Law of Treaties requires. Drawing from documentary and qualitative data and by taking people fleeing homophobia as example, this article looks at the role that IHRL may play in complementing and in intersection with IRL. It argues that IHRL may, firstly, raise obligations to facilitate the access of these claimants to asylum determination procedures and, secondly, inform the notion of persecution used in IRL more comprehensively than it currently does in practice.


Author(s):  
Michelle Foster ◽  
Hélène Lambert

This book addresses a critical gap in existing scholarship by examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, in particular by examining the extent to which the 1951 Refugee Convention protects de jure stateless persons. It responds to the need for a coherent and inclusive legal framework to address the plight of stateless individuals who fear persecution. The central hypothesis of this book is that the capacity and potential of the 1951 Refugee Convention to protect stateless persons has been inadequately developed and understood. This is particularly so when we consider the significant transformation that has occurred over the past sixty years in delimiting state discretion in matters of nationality, including in relation to the acquisition and deprivation of nationality, and the treatment of non-nationals. While it may once have been correct to assume that matters of nationality were largely outside the realm of international law, the advent of international human rights law in particular has limited state sovereignty in this respect. Accordingly, whether a stateless person is also a refugee potentially admits of a very different answer in light of modern international human rights law as compared to 1951.


Author(s):  
Violeta Moreno-Lax

This chapter identifies the content and scope of application of the EU prohibition of refoulement. Following the ‘cumulative standards’ approach, the analysis incorporates developments in international human rights law (IHRL) and international refugee law (IRL). Taking account of the prominent role of the ECHR and the Refugee Convention (CSR51) as sources of Article 19 CFR, these are the two main instruments taken in consideration. The scope of application of Articles 33 CSR51 and 3 ECHR will be identified in turns. Autonomous requirements of EU law will be determined by reference to the asylum acquis as interpreted by the CJEU. The main focus will be on the establishment of the territorial reach of EU non-refoulement. The idea that it may be territorially confined will be rejected. Drawing on the ‘Fransson paradigm’, a ‘functional’ understanding of the ‘implementation of EU law’ standard under Article 51 CFR will be put forward, as the decisive factor to determine applicability of Charter provisions. The implications of non-refoulement for the different measures of extraterritorial control considered in Part I will be delineated at the end.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 817-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn McNeilly

Human rights were a defining discourse of the 20th century. The opening decades of the twenty-first, however, have witnessed increasing claims that the time of this discourse as an emancipatory tool is up. Focusing on international human rights law, I offer a response to these claims. Drawing from Elizabeth Grosz, Drucilla Cornell and Judith Butler, I propose that a productive future for this area of law in facilitating radical social change can be envisaged by considering more closely the relationship between human rights and temporality and by thinking through a conception of rights which is untimely. This involves abandoning commitment to linearity, progression and predictability in understanding international human rights law and its development and viewing such as based on a conception of the future that is unknown and uncontrollable, that does not progressively follow from the present, and that is open to embrace of the new.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-48
Author(s):  
Kate Ogg ◽  
Chanelle Taoi

Abstract COVID-19 has presented a number of challenges for the international refugee protection regime. An issue that has received little attention is the relationship between states tightening their borders in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and their non-refoulement obligations. This raises the question of how international law responds when non-refoulement obligations may conflict with other international human rights such as the rights to life and health. Further, the legal analysis of whether a particular COVID-19 border policy is in violation of non-refoulement obligations must take into account how the travel restriction will be implemented. This article provides an overarching analysis of non-refoulement provisions in international refugee and human rights law and which COVID-19 international travel restrictions may be in breach of these obligations. We examine different types of COVID-19 travel restrictions and argue that many are undoubtedly violations of non-refoulement, but others raise unsettled questions of international law. Nevertheless, there is jurisprudence and scholarship to support the proposition that a state’s non-refoulement obligations can be triggered even in these more contested scenarios.


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