Defiance and Compliance: Australia and the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees

The United Nations ◽

Legislative Changes ◽

<p>An analysis of Australia’s level of compliance with the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the Convention) according to theories of compliance, suggests that no single compliance theory can adequately explain both instances of violation and instances of compliance. Much of Australia’s violation of the Convention, and subsequently other international human rights treaties, stems from more recent legislative changes though Australia’s offshore processing initiatives. Collectively theories of compliance are useful for identifying the driving factors which govern Australia’s handling of international obligations under the Convention. Liberal compliance theory indicates civil society and non-state actors are the most influential drivers ensuring the state is held accountable for upholding its obligations and responsibilities. Constructivist compliance theory suggests the greatest pull towards non-compliance is Australia’s notion of national identity which has influenced discriminatory policies throughout its history. National identity remains an influential driver as evidenced by current politicisation of discussion surrounding refugees and asylum seekers in Australia and subsequent legislative agendas.</p>

6. Refugees and asylum-seekers

10.1093/actrade/9780198753773.003.0006 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Khalid Koser

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

International Protection ◽

The Status ◽

Durable Solutions ◽

Local Integration ◽

The Moment ◽

Asylum-seekers are those who have applied for international protection. Asylum status is still governed by the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. ‘Refugees and asylum-seekers’ explains the changing geography of refugees and the causes and consequences of refugee movements. Refugees tend not to travel very far, putting strain on the poorest countries, and mostly settle in camps, which suffer from aid misappropriation. There are three durable solutions for refugees: voluntary repatriation, local integration, and third-country settlement. Each can be problematic and none is working well at the moment, as demonstrated by rising numbers of refugees, the increasing proportion of protracted refugee situations, and fewer returns.

Australia and People Seeking Asylum who Arrive by Boat

The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190856908.013.55 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 518-536

Author(s):

Caroline Fleay

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

United Nations ◽

Government Policies ◽

The Past ◽

The People ◽

The Status ◽

Repeated Use ◽

Throughout the past forty years various leaders from both major political parties in Australia have categorized the arrival by boat of people seeking asylum as a “crisis” and the people themselves as “illegal.” This is despite Australia being a signatory to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and receiving relatively few people who seek asylum compared with many other countries. Punitive government policies and processes have further reinforced these representations, such that “crisis” and “illegal” can now be understood as both categories of analysis and practice. The repeated use of such categories may be helping to produce and reproduce prejudice and racism and obscure the needs and experiences of people seeking asylum.

Art.4 General Obligations

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ◽

10.1093/law/9780198810667.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Broderick Andrea

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

United Nations ◽

Policy Reform ◽

Persons With Disabilities ◽

Human Rights Treaties ◽

This chapter examines Article 4 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The article sets out the general obligations under the CRPD with a view to encouraging national legal and policy reform and guiding domestic implementation of the Convention. The content of Article 4 is of cross-cutting application, since it contains overarching principles that permeate the text of the Convention as a whole. The obligations contained in the article thus seek to contextualize the interpretation of the substantive provisions of the Convention. Article 4 enumerates both general obligations and specific obligations. This distinguishes it from similar provisions in other human rights treaties, which are more in the nature of general obligations of compliance.

Research into the psychological well-being of young refugees

International Psychiatry ◽

10.1192/s1749367600002071 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 60-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Winnie Lau ◽

Trang Thomas

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Social Group ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

Well Being ◽

Psychological Well Being ◽

United Nations High Commissioner ◽

Political Opinion ◽

High Commissioner ◽

The Status ◽

Interest in the psychological well-being of refugees and asylum seekers has steadily grown in recent years. Latest estimates indicate there are 32.9 million people of concern to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2006). A refugee is defined as being in that position because of a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion, and who is consequently outside and unable to return to his or her country. The status of ‘refugee’ is contrasted with that of a person seeking asylum, whose experiences may be similar but who is not formally determined in the same way.

The Revision of the General Comment No. 1 on the Implementation of Art. 3 uncat’s Non-Refoulement Obligation in Light of the Use of Diplomatic Assurances

Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law Online ◽

10.1163/13894633_021001007 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 167-209

Author(s):

Stephanie Schlickewei

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Effective Implementation ◽

European Court ◽

Convention Against Torture ◽

International Obligations ◽

Degrading Treatment ◽

New Challenges ◽

The United Nations ◽

The Individual

On 26 June 1987, the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (uncat) entered into force. The comprehensive set of regulations of the Convention aimed at ensuring a more effective implementation of the international community’s common endeavours to eradicate torture globally. Nevertheless, torture practice still prevails in many countries. New crises, such as the international fight against terrorism, constantly compromise the achievement of the Convention’s overall objective; in particular, they present a great challenge to States Parties’ compliance with the uncat’s explicit nonrefoulement obligation of Art. 3 uncat. Aiming for the transfer of a person to another State and in a bid to nevertheless satisfy their international obligations, States Parties tend to rely on so-called diplomatic assurances from the receiving State, thereby potentially exposing the individual to the risk of being subjected to torture following the transfer. Being aware of the new challenges to the protection of Art. 3 uncat, in 2015, the United Nations Committee against Torture finally decided to undertake a comprehensive review of its General Comment No. 1 (1997). As the text of 1997 was considered to no longer meet the needs of the States with respect to the new challenges of the 21st century, the revision was inter alia aimed to also explicitly address the alarming trend of the application of diplomatic assurances and to include an assessment of their legitimate use in the context of Art. 3 uncat. This article outlines the aforementioned review process with regard to the use of diplomatic assurances in the context of torture and analyses the question of their legitimacy under international law with respect to the uncat and in light of and in comparison to the European Court of Human Right’s jurisdiction in this context.

No Date on the Door: Direct Provision Housing, Child Asylum Seekers, and Ireland’s Violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Children and Forced Migration ◽

10.1007/978-3-319-40691-6_14 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 317-346

Author(s):

Narintohn Luangrath

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

Rights Of The Child ◽

A corpus-based approach to discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in UN and newspaper texts

Journal of Language and Politics ◽

10.1075/jlp.4.2.04bak ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 197-226 ◽

Cited By ~ 128

Author(s):

Paul Baker ◽

Tony McEnery

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Asylum Seeker ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

United Nations High Commissioner ◽

Lexical Choice ◽

Essential Aspect ◽

High Commissioner ◽

The Subject ◽

The United Nations ◽

A corpus-based analysis of discourses of refugees and asylum seekers was carried out on data taken from a range of British newspapers and texts from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website, both published in 2003. Concordances of the terms refugee(s) and asylum seeker(s) were examined and grouped along patterns which revealed linguistic traces of discourses. Discourses which framed refugees as packages, invaders, pests or water were found in newspaper texts, although there were also cases of negative discourses found in the UNHCR texts, revealing how difficult it is to disregard dominant discourses. Lexical choice was found to be an essential aspect of maintaining discourses of asylum seekers — collocational analyses of terms like failed vs. rejected revealed the underlying attitudes of the writers towards the subject.

The ‘Disabled’ as a Subject of Law: Utopian Discourse or Pragmatic Paradigm?

Christ University Law Journal ◽

10.12728/culj.5.1 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

Mukherjee Gaurav

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Legal Framework ◽

Access To Justice ◽

Legal Systems ◽

Persons With Disabilities ◽

The Disabled ◽

The Status ◽

International Obligations ◽

Pragmatic Paradigm

Legal systems across the world have envisaged the ‗subjects of law‘ on the basis of gender, race or disability. The feminist school of thought opines that appropriate interventions are necessary on the identified structures that have the male non disabled as the subject of its legal discourse. The critical legal school believes that legal systems are built in ways that benefit certain groups of persons who seek to perpetuate the status quo. This paper seeks to understand the prevailing law in relation to the access to justice for individuals with disability and answer whether accommodations have been made to comply with India‘s international obligations vis-à-vis the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It shall also be the endeavour of this paper to compare as to how the developed and developing nations fare with relation to their United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities obligations to ensure that persons with disability have effective access to justice within the boundaries of the legal framework. The paper also demonstrates how the Indian legal system might be altered in order to make better procedural and substantive accommodations by drawing lessons from other nations.

Art.36 Consideration of Reports

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ◽

10.1093/law/9780198810667.003.0037 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Combrinck Helene

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

United Nations ◽

International Human Rights ◽

Persons With Disabilities ◽

Social Council ◽

Human Rights Treaties ◽

International Monitoring ◽

Treaty Monitoring ◽

This chapter examines Article 36 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which sets out one of the CRPD’s international monitoring mechanisms, viz the consideration of state reports by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Every human rights treaty contains certain ‘directives’ for the treaty monitoring body on how to respond to reports from member states. The notion of monitoring human rights implementation through the review of periodic reports had its origins in a 1956 resolution of the United Nations Economic and Social Council which requested states to submit, every three years, reports on progress achieved in advancing the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By 1977, a reporting requirement had been included into each of the ‘core’ international human rights treaties. This has become a standard feature of all subsequent human rights treaties, including the CRPD.