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Full-Text Articles in Law

Who Should Watch Over Refugee Law?, James C. Hathaway Jan 2002

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.


Interpretation Of The Definition Of 'Refugee' Under Art. 1(A)(2) Of The Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees, With A View To The Elaboration Of A Community Instrument To Guide The Application Of The Refugee Convention Pursuant To Art.63(1)(C) Of The Treaty Of The European Communities, James C. Hathaway Jan 2001

Interpretation Of The Definition Of 'Refugee' Under Art. 1(A)(2) Of The Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees, With A View To The Elaboration Of A Community Instrument To Guide The Application Of The Refugee Convention Pursuant To Art.63(1)(C) Of The Treaty Of The European Communities, James C. Hathaway

Other Publications

In approaching the task of recommending how to structure a Directive on common minimum standards for the recognition ofrefugee status in the Member States of the European Union, I have struggled to avoid two extremes. On the one hand, my recommendations might simply have reflected a search for the common denominator of relevant practice. The risk of this sort of analysis is, of course, that it clearly promotes a "race to the bottom," in which those States which presently fully implement their international obligations are encouraged to reduce the standard of protection. The alternative extreme would have been to define …


Temporary Protection Of Refugees: Threat Or Solution?, James C. Hathaway Jan 2001

Temporary Protection Of Refugees: Threat Or Solution?, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

While many of us in the refugee protection community have traditionally seen temporary protection as something to be resisted, I believe that temporary protection could, in contrast, be a profoundly important part of a solution to the international refugee protection crisis. To make my argument that the right kind of temporary protection could be an important means to give new life to international refugee protection, I will briefly address three issues. First, I would like to suggest why it is that states around the world, in the North and increasingly in the South as well, are refusing the live up …


Framing Refugee Protection In The New World Disorder, James C. Hathaway, Colin J. Harvey Jan 2001

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

Articles

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 …


Why Supervise The Refugee Convention?, James C. Hathaway Jan 2001

Why Supervise The Refugee Convention?, James C. Hathaway

Articles

The Refugee Convention is the only major human rights treaty that is not externally supervised. Under all of the other key UN human rights accords — on the rights of women and children, against torture and racial discrimination, and to promote civil and political, as well as economic, social, and cultural rights — there is at least some effort made to ensure that States are held accountable for what they have signed onto.


Refugee Rights Are Not Negotiable, James C. Hathaway, Anne K. Cusick Jan 2000

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

Articles

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 …


International Refugee Law: The Michigan Guidelines On The Internal Protection Alternative, James C. Hathaway Jan 1999

International Refugee Law: The Michigan Guidelines On The Internal Protection Alternative, James C. Hathaway

Articles

International refugee law is designed only to provide a back-up source of protection to seriously at-risk persons. Its purpose is not to displace the primary rule that individuals should look to their state of nationality for protection, but simply to provide a safety net in the event a state fails to meet its basic protective responsibilities.1 As observed by the Supreme Court of Canada, "[t]he international community was meant to be a forum of second resort for the persecuted, a 'surrogate,' approachable upon the failure of local protection. The rationale upon which international refugee law rests is not simply the …


America's Apostasy, James C. Hathaway Jan 1999

America's Apostasy, James C. Hathaway

Articles

It has often struck me that the prominence of the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States epitomizes the plight of international law in this country. The title of this standard reference on international law does not even refer to international law, but instead to foreign relations law. That is, it is meant to set out the standards by which we may legitimately judge the conduct of others. The clear, if unintended, message is that the Restatement is not really a codification of laws that bind us. And indeed, it is explicitly not just a codification, but …


Can International Refugee Law Be Made Relevant Again?, James C. Hathaway Jan 1998

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

Articles

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 Jan 1997

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

Articles

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 …


Quelques Questions Juridiques A L'Egard Des "Boat People" En Tant Que Refugies Politiques, Sompong Sucharitkul Jan 1989

Quelques Questions Juridiques A L'Egard Des "Boat People" En Tant Que Refugies Politiques, Sompong Sucharitkul

Publications

No abstract provided.