Law Commons^™

Distancing Refugees, Geoffrey Heeren

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Today, two systems exist for addressing the humanitarian claims of persons fleeing persecution. One system consists of refugees living in host countries, often in large camps, who ideally are then resettled in other countries or repatriated when it is safe to do so. The other system involves refugees arriving in a country and seeking asylum-a right with ancient religious roots. The first "encampment model" is fundamentally broken, as most refugees are housed in the developing or least developed world in terrible conditions for extended periods of time, with little or no realistic hope of resettlement elsewhere or repatriation. The developed …

Assigning Protection: Can Refugee Rights And State Preferences Be Reconciled?, James C. Hathaway

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The theoretically global responsibility to protect refugees is today heavily skewed, with just ten countries – predominantly very poor – hosting more than half of the world’s refugee population. Refugee protection has moreover become tantamount to warehousing for most refugees, with roughly half of the world’s refugees stuck in “protracted refugee situations” for decades with their lives on hold. Both concerns – the unprincipled allocation of responsibility based on accidents of geography and the desperate need for greater attention to resettlement as a core protection response – cry out for a global, managed system to protect refugees.

A Global Solution To A Global Refugee Crisis, James C. Hathaway

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The author argues that the time is right to change the way that refugee law is implemented. Specifically, Hathaway advocates a shift towards a managed and collectivized approach to the implementation of refugee protection obligations. He contends that while the obligations under the Convention remain sound, the mechanisms for implementing those obligations are flawed in ways that too often lead States to act against their own values and interests, and which produce needless suffering amongst refugees. The author concludes with a five-point plan to revitalize the Refugee Convention.

E.U. Accountability To International Law: The Case Of Asylum, James C. Hathaway

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In one of his later published works, Eric Stein wrote that "[a]s modern administrative state, transparency in the Union is essential not only to inform member state parliaments and electorates, but also to help form an all-European debate and public opinion that are required to sustain advanced integration."' In his usual prescient way, Professor Stein captured the dilemma of the European Union as it has shifted from an amalgam of states seeking consensus in a largely behind-closed-doors way to what many would see as an emerging federal state. With its undoubted ability to project power, will the European Union effectively …

Leveraging Asylum, James C. Hathaway

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I believe that the analysis underlying the leveraged right to asylum is conceptually flawed. As I will show, there is no duty of non-refoulement that binds all states as a matter of customary international law and it is not the case that all persons entitled to claim protection against refoulement of some kind are ipso facto entitled to refugee rights. These claims are unsound precisely because the critical bedrock of a real international legal obligation-namely, the consent of states evinced by either formal commitments or legally relevant actions -does not yet exist.

Incorporating A 'Best Interests Of The Child' Approach Into Immigration Law And Procedure, Bridgette A. Carr

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United States immigration law and procedure frequently ignore the plight of children directly affected by immigration proceedings. This ignorance means decision-makers often lack the discretion to protect a child from persecution by halting the deportation of a parent, while parents must choose between abandoning their children in a foreign land and risking the torture of their children. United States immigration law systematically fails to consider the best interests of children directly affected by immigration proceedings. This failure has resulted in a split among the federal circuit courts of appeals regarding whether the persecution a child faces may be used to …

Refugee Solution, Or Solutions To Refugeehood?, James C. Hathaway

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This is the text of a lecture delivered by James C. Hathaway in London in October 2006 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Jesuit Refugee Service. The lecture was sponsored jointly by the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, London School of Economics; the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics, and Public Life; and Jesuit Refugee Service (UK).

Sending The Bureaucracy To War, Elena Baylis, David Zaring

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Administrative law has been transformed after 9/11, much to its detriment. Since then, the government has mobilized almost every part of the civil bureaucracy to fight terrorism, including agencies that have no obvious expertise in that task. The vast majority of these bureaucratic initiatives suffer from predictable, persistent, and probably intractable problems - problems that contemporary legal scholars tend to ignore, even though they are central to the work of the writers who created and framed the discipline of administrative law.

We analyze these problems through a survey of four administrative initiatives that exemplify the project of sending bureaucrats to …

Why Refugee Law Still Matters, James C. Hathaway

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I am concerned that the singular importance of international refugee law is profoundly misunderstood. My more specific worry is that erroneous and competing claims by governments and the refugee advocacy community about the structure and purpose of refugee law threaten its continuing ability to play a truly unique human rights role at a time when no meaningful alternative is in sight.

Refugees' Human Rights And The Challenge Of Political Will, James C. Hathaway

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Governments in all parts of the world are withdrawing in practice from meeting the legal duty to provide refugees with the protection they require. While states continue to proclaim a willingness to assist refugees as a matter of political discretion or humanitarian goodwill, many appear committed to a pattern of defensive strategies designed to avoid international legal responsibility toward involuntary migrants. Some see this shift away from a legal paradigm of refugee protection as a source of enhanced operational flexibility in the face of changed political circumstances. For refugees themselves, however, the increasingly marginal relevance of international refugee law has …

The Right Of States To Repatriate Former Refugees, James C. Hathaway

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Armed conflict often results in the large-scale exodus of refugees into politically and economically fragile neighboring states. The burdens on asylum countries can be extreme, and may only be partly offset by the arrival of international aid and protection resources. Moreover, difficulties inherent in the provision of asylum have been exacerbated in recent years by the increasing disinclination of the wealthier countries that fund the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and most other assistance agencies to meet the real costs of protection. In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that as conflicts wind down, host countries ordinarily seek to …

What's In A Label?, James C. Hathaway

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One of the most striking features of the international refugee regime as it has evolved over the last quarter century is the proliferation of labels. Rather than simply assessing the circumstances of applicants against the Convention refugee definition, the governments of most developed states have instead invented a seemingly endless list of alternative statuses - "B" status, humanitarian admission, temporary protected status, special leave to remain, Duldung, and the like. Persons assigned one of these labels have generally been protected against refoulement in line with Article 33 of the Refugee Convention. But in a variety of other ways, they have …

The Causal Nexus In International Refugee Law, James C. Hathaway

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For all of its value as a critical mechanism of human rights protection, international refugee law is not an all-encompassing remedy. In at least two ways, the category of persons of concern to refugee law is significantly more narrow than the universe of victims of human rights abuse. First, only persons able somehow to leave their own country can be refugees. Alienage is a requirement for refugee status because of concerns about the limits of international resources and the potential for responsibility-shifting, as well as in recognition of the fundamental constraints which sovereignty still places on meaningful intervention by the …

Refugee Law Is Not Immigration Law, James C. Hathaway

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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.

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

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We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

We simply cannot afford to sell out the future of refugee protection in a hasty bid to establish something that looks, more or less, like an oversight mechanism for the Refugee Convention.

Gonzalez Exrel. Gonzalez V. Reno. 212 F.3d 1338, Rehearing Denied, 215 F.3d 1243, Certiorari Denied, 120 S.Ct. 2737 (2000). U.S. Court Of Appeals For The Eleventh Circuit, June 1, 2000., David Abraham

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No abstract provided.

Framing Refugee Protection In The New World Disorder, James C. Hathaway, Colin J. Harvey

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A number of jurisdictions have fastened onto a "solution" that appears to reconcile respect for refugee law with the determination of states to rid themselves quickly of potentially violent asylum seekers. Courts in these states have been persuaded that a person who has committed or facilitated acts of violence may lawfully be denied a refugee status hearing under a clause of the Refugee Convention that authorizes the automatic exclusion of persons whom the government reasonably believes are international or extraditable criminals. Refugee law so interpreted is reconcilable with even fairly blunt measures for the exclusion of violent asylum seekers. In …

Refugee Rights Are Not Negotiable, James C. Hathaway, Anne K. Cusick

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America's troubled relationship with international law, in particular human rights law, is well documented. In many cases, the United States simply will not agree to be bound by international human rights treaties. For example, the United States has yet to ratify even such fundamental agreements as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When the United States does agree to become a party to an international human rights treaty, it has often sought to condition its acceptance …

Can International Refugee Law Be Made Relevant Again?, James C. Hathaway

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Ironic though it may seem, I believe that the present breakdown in the authority of international refugee law is attributable to its failure explicitly to accommodate the reasonable preoccupations of governments in the countries to which refugees flee. International refugee law is part of a system of state self-regulation. It will therefore be respected only to the extent that receiving states believe that it fairly reconciles humanitarian objectives to their national interests. In contrast, refugee law arbitrarily assigns full legal responsibility for protection to whatever state asylum-seekers are able to reach. It is a peremptory regime. Apart from the right …

Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal For Collectivized And Solution-Oriented Protection, James C. Hathaway, R. Alexander Neve

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International refugee law is in crisis. Even as armed conflict and human rights abuse continue to force individuals and groups to flee their home countries, many governments are withdrawing from the legal duty to provide refugees with the protection they require. While governments proclaim a willingness to assist refugees as a matter of political discretion or humanitarian goodwill, they appear committed to a pattern of defensive strategies designed to avoid international legal responsibility toward involuntary migrants. Some see this shift away from a legal paradigm of refugee protection as a source for enhanced operational flexibility in the face of changed …

Irregular' Asylum Seekers: What's All The Fuss?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

In 1985, the Executive Committee of UNHCR noted its concern about "the growing phenomenon of refugees and asylum-seekers who, having found protection in one country, move in an irregular manner to another country..." (Conclusion No. 36, para. j). At first glance, one might not view this conclusion as objectionable. With all of the millions of refugees in the world, most of who have no protection, why should we be concerned about the lot of a bunch of ingrates who, having already found protection, now want to move on in search of greener pastures? Don't we really have better things to …

The Humane And Just Alternative For Canada, James C. Hathaway

Articles

The essence of C-55 ignores the admonition of the Standing Committee that we must be "knowledgeable and sensitive to human rights issues rather than immigration issues. The determination decision is not an immigration matter but instead a decision as to who are Convention refugees in need of Canada's protection." In stark contrast, immigration authorities have spoken of the importance of refugee law reform as a means of "enabling us to continue our strategy of controlled growth in immigration to Canada." By speaking of refugees in the same breath as immigration policy, the department has effectively confused the privilege of immigration …

Compassion And Pragmatism, James C. Hathaway

Articles

Open wide the floodgates?

Much of the initial media reaction to the recently released Plaut Report on the refugee status determination process unfortunately has given the impression that the changes proposed will in some sense give rise to "gatecrashing" by persons unwilling to comply with ordinary immigration requirements, thereby jeopardizing the ability of Canada to ensure the integrity of its borders. We are told that the adoption of the study's proposals would "encourage purported refugees to arrive here in numbers that would soon overwhelm [the proposed] procedures" (Globe and Mail editorial, June 20, 1985).

This is far from accurate.

It …