This book presents a comprehensive assessment of regional responses to the crisis in the asylum/refugee system and critically examines how different regions tackle the problem. The chapters consider the fundamental challenges which undermine an effective asylum process as well as regional difficulties with the various circumstances surrounding asylum seekers. With contributions on Africa, Europe, Latin America, South Asia and the Middle East, and the Pacific, the collection strives to appreciate what informs each region’s approach to the asylum process and asks if there are issues common to every region and if regions can learn from one another. The book seeks an understanding of the existing legal regime for the protection of asylum seekers and how regional institutions such as human rights commissions and regional courts enforce and adjudicate the law. The volume will be valuable to those interested in international law, migration and human rights.
This Handbook draws together leading and emerging scholars to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of international refugee law. This book provides an account as well as a critique of the status quo, setting the agenda for future research in the field.
Looking at refugee protection in Latin America, this landmark edited collection assesses what the region has achieved in recent years. It analyses Latin America’s main documents in refugee protection, evaluates the particular aspects of different regimes, and reviews their emergence, development and effect, to develop understanding of refugee protection in the region. Drawing from multidisciplinary texts from both leading academics and practitioners, this comprehensive, innovative and highly topical book adopts an analytical framework to understand and improve Latin America’s protection of refugees.
This book presents a comprehensive assessment of regional responses to the crisis in the asylum/refugee system and critically examines how different regions tackle the problem. The chapters consider the fundamental challenges which undermine an effective asylum process as well as regional difficulties with the various circumstances surrounding asylum seekers. With contributions on Africa, Europe, Latin America, South Asia and the Middle East, and the Pacific, the collection strives to appreciate what informs each region’s approach to the asylum process and asks if there are issues common to every region and if regions can learn from one another. The book seeks an understanding of the existing legal regime for the protection of asylum seekers and how regional institutions such as human rights commissions and regional courts enforce and adjudicate the law. The volume will be valuable to those interested in international law, migration and human rights.
This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts. Part One analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Conventions drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and complementary relationships between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter. Part Two focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa.
The international refugee regime is fundamentally broken. Designed in the wake of World War II to provide protection and assistance, the system is unable to address the record numbers of persons displaced by conflict and violence today. States have put up fences and adopted policies to deny, deter, and detain asylum seekers. People recognized as refugees are routinely denied rights guaranteed by international law. The results are dismal for the millions of refugees around the world who are left with slender prospects to rebuild their lives or contribute to host communities. T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Leah Zamore lay bare the underlying global crisis of responsibility. The Arc of Protection adopts a revisionist and critical perspective that examines the original premises of the international refugee regime. Aleinikoff and Zamore identify compromises at the founding of the system that attempted to balance humanitarian ideals and sovereign control of their borders by states. This book offers a way out of the current international morass through refocusing on responsibility-sharing, seeing the humanitarian-development divide in a new light, and putting refugee rights front and center.
Refugees and their protection have started to be a part of daily conversation in recent years. New flows from Africa to Europe, new crisis in Asia and in the Americas, and record numbers since the Second World War, for instance, have paved the way for news reports in the media, political discourses on the topic and debates on how to actually protect these persons. In a world scenario of increasingly (i) closed borders, (ii) association of migration to security issues, (iii) lack of political will to ascertain human rights and (iv) disregard for migration as a right in se, the challenges on and for refugees’ protection have been progressing; as have the need for international protection of persons fleeing well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership to a social group, i.e. refugees. Regional approaches and national practices gain relevance, especially if they can be seen as good practices, even if not without flaws. “What are the main challenges and opportunities regarding Refugee Protection in Latin America and in Brazil? The book offers a very convincing response. The essays by Liliana Jubilut reflect rigorous academic research and years of practical experience on supporting asylum seekers and refugees. The author is certainly one of the most influential scholars in Brazil working in the Forced Migration field, and the essays provide a comprehensive view of Refugee Protection in Brazil and Latin America”. – Gabriel Gualano de Godoy, PhD, UNHCR Chief of Mission in the Dominican Republic and former Head of UNHCR Protection Unit in Brazil. “This book shed clear lights on the development of refugee protection in Latin America for the years to come. Liliana Jubilut is already a leading scholar on refugee protection in Latin America and her articles reflect a long myriad of issues related to refugee protection, since status determination, resettlement, local integration and the remarkable humanitarian visas for the Syrian refugees. She shows the developments and setbacks and recover the most important developments since the Cartagena Declaration with a sharp eye and historical perspective. This book will soon become an essential bibliography for anyone trying to understand the particular and innovative refugee protection initiatives in this troubled but generous region”. – Wellington Pereira Carneiro, PhD, UNHCR Senior Official (having worked in Brazil and Colombia for UNHCR and in Panama prior to joining the UN)
