Law Commons^™

The Rights Of Refugees Under International Law, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

The universal rights of refugees are today derived from two primary sources - general standards of international human rights law, and the Refugee Convention itself. As the analysis in Chapter 1 makes clear, the obligations derived from the Refugee Convention remain highly relevant, despite the development since 1951 of a broad-ranging system of international human rights law. In particular, general human rights norms do not address many refugee-specific concerns; general economic rights are defined as duties of progressive implementation and may legitimately be denied to non-citizens by less developed countries; not all civil rights are guaranteed to non-citizens, and most …

The Architecture Of The Un Refugee Convention And Protocol, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

The heart of international refugee law is the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, with some three-quarters of the world’s governments having bound themselves to respect the standards set by these treaties. Contracting States may—and often have—accepted additional refugee protection responsibilities under national or regional law. But, as a matter of international law, these additional duties complement rather than supplant the fundamental commitments made under the Refugee Convention and Protocol.

The architecture of this core normative standard is in many ways unusual. As a formal matter, it derives …

Refugee Law Is Not Immigration Law, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

The spectacle of the governments of Australia, Indonesia, and Norway playing pass the parcel with 400 refugees, most of them Afghans, is not an edifying one... Yet the issues of responsibility, over which the three governments are arguing, are important ones which, left unsettled in this and other cases, could only worsen the prospects for all refugees in the longer run. For the truth is that when what agreement has been painfully achieved between nations on how to deal with refugees breaks down, the natural reaction is to erect even higher barriers than already exist.

The International Refugee Rights Regime, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

The origins of refugee rights are closely intertwined with the emergence of the general system of international human rights law. Like international human rights, the refugee rights regime is a product of the twentieth century. Its contemporary codification by the United Nations took place just after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was strongly influenced by the Declaration's nonnative structure. More fundamentally, however, the refugee rights regime draws heavily on the earlier precedents of the law of responsibility for injuries to aliens and international efforts to protect national minorities.

In this overview of the refugee rights …