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A Comparative Perspective On Safe Third And First Country Of Asylum Policies In The United Kingdom And North America: Legal Norms, Principles And Lessons Learned, Susan M. Akram, Elizabeth Ruddick
A Comparative Perspective On Safe Third And First Country Of Asylum Policies In The United Kingdom And North America: Legal Norms, Principles And Lessons Learned, Susan M. Akram, Elizabeth Ruddick
Faculty Scholarship
Wealthy refugee-receiving countries across the global north have recently been experimenting with systems that they believe will allow them lawfully to remove or turn back asylum-seekers reaching their borders, without considering their claims for international protection. These include the Trump administration's Asylum Cooperation Agreements (ACAs), the United Kingdom's Nationality and Borders Act, and the recent amendments to Denmark's Aliens Act that will allow asylum-seekers to be transferred to third countries for processing. Although these systems have many important differences, they rest on a shared premise that neither the Refugee Convention nor international, regional or domestic human rights laws prohibit such …
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 …
Assessing The Impact Of The Global Compacts On Refugees And Migration In The Middle East, Susan M. Akram
Assessing The Impact Of The Global Compacts On Refugees And Migration In The Middle East, Susan M. Akram
Faculty Scholarship
Today, the overwhelming burden of the global refugee and migrant crisis is borne by the Middle East region, driven by protracted armed conflict and exacerbated by a deficit of applicable international legal norms. Most States in the Middle East have not adopted the international treaties that provide protection guarantees for refugees and stateless persons, the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The lack of legal status for persons displaced by conflict, many of whom are stateless refugees, leaves them in situations …
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 …
Tibetan Diaspora In The Shadow Of The Self-Immolation Crisis: Consequences Of Colonialism, Robert D. Sloane
Tibetan Diaspora In The Shadow Of The Self-Immolation Crisis: Consequences Of Colonialism, Robert D. Sloane
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter for a book on protracted refugee crises argues that the origins of both the unresolved Tibetan refugee crisis and the tragic and unprecedented wave of some 120 self-immolations in Tibet since 2009 lie in Tibet’s unacknowledged status as a colony. China illegally invaded and annexed Tibet in 1950, and it remains under belligerent occupation to this day. Contrary to the official views of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the United States, and (to my knowledge) every other state in the world, it is a fiction to refer to the Tibetan people as a Chinese 'minority nationality'. Every …
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 …