Article 1: Definition of a Child

While all international human rights treaties apply to children, only the Convention explicitly elaborates who is defined as a child. Article 1 defines the child as a human being who is below the age of 18 years. Majority is set at age 18 unless, under domestic law, it is attained earlier. During the negotiations of the text of the Convention, there was significant debate regarding definitions of both the commencement and the ending of childhood. The initial text, proposed by the Polish Government, drawing on Principle 1 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959, provided no definition of childhood at all (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Rädda barnen (Society: Sweden), 2007, p. 301). However, government delegates on the Working Group immediately highlighted the need for clarification. The first revision of the text therefore proposed that a child is a human being from birth to the age of 18 years unless majority is attained earlier. However, with regard to the beginning of childhood, the Working Group were unable to come to a consensus. An unresolvable division persisted on whether childhood, in respect of the Convention, commenced from the point of conception, or from birth (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Rädda barnen (Society: Sweden), 2007, pp. 301–313). The conflict was ultimately resolved by removing any reference to the start of childhood.

“You sleep with the devil; you wake up in hell!”: On the new EU-Turkey Deal

Right from the start in 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Amnesty International challenged the legitimacy of the so-called refugee deal between Turkey and the EU. Toward the end of 2020, the EU concluded another agreement with Turkey as part of the €6 billion in funding covered by the refugee deal, in spite of Turkey’s deteriorating human rights record. Against a backdrop of Turkey’s weaponizing of refugees against Europe and Europe’s treatment of the refugee issue as a local problem, the European border and coast guard organization Frontex has been practicing illegal pushbacks. It is clear that once you toy with the devil, you cannot escape hell.

Exploring possibilities of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ integration with churches in refugee response

The refugee crisis has been an ongoing global challenge. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international body that is mandated to protect refugees. However, in undertaking its function, it involves many stakeholders such as refugee communities, civil society actors, government entities, non-governmental organisations, other United Nations agencies and the church; thus ensuring effective interventions. With this in mind, it is sought in this article to understand how the UNHCR involved or integrated churches in its approach to intervention in refugee crises, as some churches had evidently become community bulwarks and safe havens for refugees. In order to accomplish the aforementioned objective, literature pertinent to the subject is reviewed. It commenced by discussing the UNHCR’s approach to intervention in and responses to the refugee crisis, and this was followed by the identification and discussion of the UNHCR’s interventions in which the churches were meaningfully involved to optimise their response to refugee crises. In discussing this role and the approach of the UNHCR, the extent is revealed to which the churches’ involvement or integration in the refugee agency’s approach to intervention in the refugee crisis was limited. Notably, this limitation was exacerbated by, among many others, the key sticking issues that could be the barriers or challenges in preventing the integration of churches in the UNHCR’s responses to migration crises and vice versa. Although there were sticking issues that hampered the UNHCR’s integration of churches in its approach to intervention in the refugee crisis, the article is concluded by identifying and discussing some existing opportunities that may further strengthen the existing UNHCR–Church intervention approaches to the crises. Among many others, formal UNHCR–Church collaborations were found to be critical in strengthening their mutual efforts to ameliorate the refugee crisis, as they could complement each other in providing effective and comprehensive interventions.Contribution: The major contribution of this article is that it examined the responses of the UNHCR and the church to the refugee crisis. Notably, embedded in this was the assessment of how the UNHCR was integrating churches in its approach to intervention in refugee crises. Consequently, this resulted in the identification and discussion of opportunities that may further strengthen the existing UNHCR–Church intervention approaches to the aforementioned humanitarian crisis.

When Perceptions and Aspirations Clash

This chapter talks about refugees crossing the borders into neighboring countries, which reveals a discrepancy between the reality on the ground and the standardized approaches taken by humanitarian actors. It cites Turkey as the country where the humanitarian presence was limited, and the Turkish state and civil society took the lead without the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in responding to refugee needs. It also argues that the refugee response in Turkey was provided without undermining refugee agency and dignity. The chapter emphasizes that global templates for humanitarian assistance built from experiences in very different contexts and among populations of significantly different makeup are not easily integrated into Middle Eastern concepts of refuge, hospitality, and charity. It criticizes the architecture of assistance that was built upon templates developed largely among agrarian and poor developing countries.

Part 3 Protection, 9 International Protection

This chapter assesses international protection. The lack or denial of protection is a principal feature of refugee character, and it is for international law, in turn, to substitute its own protection for that which the country of origin cannot or will not provide. Non-refoulement is the foundation stone of international protection. The first intergovernmental arrangements on behalf of refugees were contemporaneous with the establishment of various international institutions charged with their implementation. The chapter then looks at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and other organizations and agencies. It also considers the protection of groups of refugees who face particular vulnerabilities, including women refugees, child refugees, and refugees with disabilities. Each group is protected by one or more particular human rights treaties, which recognize their rights, and members of these groups are often subject to discrimination or otherwise marginalized.