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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
The Past As Present, Unlearned Lessons And The (Non-) Utility Of International Law, Susan M. Akram
The Past As Present, Unlearned Lessons And The (Non-) Utility Of International Law, Susan M. Akram
Faculty Scholarship
The contemporary moment provides an acute illustration of the dangers of historical amnesia—as if the Trump Administration’s policies of exclusion, extremist nationalism, and presidential imperialism were singular to ‘now,’ and entirely reversible in the next election. This Article argues to the contrary; that we have been down this road before, and the current crisis in immigration and refugee policies is the inevitable development of trends of racism, including anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism and xenophobia, that have only become normalized by the populist resurgence of Trumpism. If this premise is correct—that we are experiencing a culmination of a historical trajectory—what lessons from …
The Search For Protection For Stateless Refugees In The Middle East: Palestinians And Kurds In Lebanon And Jordan, Susan M. Akram
The Search For Protection For Stateless Refugees In The Middle East: Palestinians And Kurds In Lebanon And Jordan, Susan M. Akram
Faculty Scholarship
Most Arab countries have not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention/1967 Protocol or the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness has no ratifications in the Middle East. While regional conventions dealing with refugees in the Arab world have been developed, they have been honoured primarily in the breach. Further, many Arab countries do not have domestic laws governing the status of refugees or stateless persons per se, but have applied ad hoc policies to the waves of refugees that have entered and stayed – some for decades – in …
Orientalism Revisited In Asylum And Refugee Claims, Susan M. Akram
Orientalism Revisited In Asylum And Refugee Claims, Susan M. Akram
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines the stereotyping of Islam both by advocates and academics in refugee rights advocacy. The article looks at a particular aspect of this stereotyping, which can be seen as ‘neo-Orientalism’ occurring in the asylum and refugee context, particularly affecting women, and the damage that it does to refugee rights both in and outside the Arab and Muslim world. The article points out the dangers of neo-orientalism in framing refugee law issues, and asks for a more thoughtful and analytical approach by Western refugee advocates and academics on the panoply of Muslim attitudes and Islamic thought affecting applicants for …
The World Refugee Regime In Crisis: A Failure To Fulfill The Burden-Sharing And Humanitarian Requirements Of The 1951 Refugee Convention, Susan M. Akram
The World Refugee Regime In Crisis: A Failure To Fulfill The Burden-Sharing And Humanitarian Requirements Of The 1951 Refugee Convention, Susan M. Akram
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Musarat-Akram provided several examples which illustrate the crisis of the international refugee regime. Specifically, they illustrate, first, that the protections offered so generously in the language and purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention7 are more European and-Western-centered than ever before.
Second, they illustrate some of the restrictionist policies by which Western and industrialized states have succeeded in confining huge refugee flows to the most impoverished and least developed states in the world.
Third, they illustrate that the initial limitations inherent in the 1951 Refugee Convention have now been exacerbated by state practice which interprets the Convention language and …