Offering a comprehensive and detailed analysis of refugee protection in Southeast Asia from an international law perspective, this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of international relations, international refugee law, international human rights law, migration governance, and Southeast Asian Studies.
This book examines Southeast Asia's rejection of international refugee law through extensive archival analysis and argues that this rejection was shaped by the region's response to its largest refugee crisis in the post-1945 era: the Indochinese refugee crisis from 1975-1996.
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.
In 2016, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) became part of the United Nations. With 173 member states and more than 400 field offices, the IOM—the new ‘UN migration agency’—plays a key role in migration governance. The contributors in this volume provide an in-depth and comprehensive insight into the IOM, its transformation, current structure and projects, as well as its capacity, self-understanding and political agenda.
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.
Partition and post-colonial migrations – sometimes voluntary, often forced – have created borders in South Asia that serve to oppress rather than protect. Migrants and refugees feel their real home lies beyond the border, and liberation struggles continue the quest for freedoms that have proven to be elusive for many. States scapegoat refugees as "outsiders" for their own ends, justifying the denial of their rights, while academic discourse on refugees represents them either as victims or as terrorists. Taking a stance against such projections, this book examines refugees’ struggles for better living conditions and against marginalization. By analyzing protest and militarization among refugees, the book argues that they are neither victims without agency nor war entrepreneurs. Through interviews, surveys, and statistical analyses, it shows how states have manipulated refugee identity and resistance to promote the ideal of the nation-state, thereby creating protracted refugee crises. This is evident even in the most humanitarian state intervention in modern South Asia – India’s military intervention in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971. The findings put forward provide the basis to understand the conditions under which violence can break out, and thereby have implications for host countries, donor countries, and aid organizations in the formulation of refugee‐policy. The book is of interest to scholars in the fields of South Asian studies, comparative politics, international relations, refugee studies, development studies, security studies and peace studies.
The chapters in this book explore the impact of recent shifts in global and regional power and the subsequent development and enforcement of international refugee protection standards in the Asia Pacific region. Drawing on their expertise across a number of jurisdictions, the contributors assess the challenges confronting the implementation of international law in the region, as well as new opportunities for extending protection norms into national and regional dialogues. The case studies span key jurisdictions across the region and include a comparative analysis with China, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia. This topical and important book raises critical questions for the Asia Pacific region and sheds light on the challenges confronting the protection of refugees and displaced persons in this area. Interdisciplinary in its approach, it will be of interest to academics, researchers, students and policy-makers concerned with the rights and protection of refugees.
This important study brings together an interdisciplinary group of essays by international scholars of European and Southeast Asian regional integration. The contributors examine whether there are useful lessons to be learned from the European experience. It offers an important contribution to the development of the field of regionalism studies.
This book offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of refugee protection in Southeast Asia from an international law perspective. It examines both the legal and policy frameworks pertaining to the protection of refugees in the region as well as the countries’ response to refugee movements from the Indochinese refugee crisis in the mid-1970s to the most recent developments. It covers important aspects of refugee protection, such as access to territory, non-refoulement, the treatment of refugees, the concept of refugee as applied in the region, burden-sharing and durable solutions to the plight of refugees. The analysis focuses specifically on the main countries of asylum within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that are not parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention, namely Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Using an international law perspective based on the doctrine of the ‘two elements’ (practice and opinio juris), the author argues that these states have long recognized that people fleeing persecution, armed conflict and generalized violence, namely refugees, should be protected. This in turn demonstrates that they recognize the existence and relevance of the international refugee regime despite their refusal to accede to the Refugee Convention. Offering a different perspective on the links between international refugee law and refugee protection in Southeast Asia, this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of international relations, international refugee law, international human rights law, migration governance and Southeast Asian Studies.
Temporary protection is a flexible tool of international protection, which offers sanctuary to those fleeing humanitarian crises, and currently affects the lives and legal status of millions of forced migrants. However, the content, boundaries and legal foundation of temporary protection, remain largely undefined or unsettled. There are only a few instruments that provide guidance to states on how to respond to mass influx situations and how to implement temporary protection regimes. In Temporary Protection in Law and Practice, Meltem Ineli-Ciger takes a step towards clarifying those undefined aspects of temporary protection, by examining temporary protection’s legal foundation in international law and its relationship with the Refugee Convention. The book also reviews temporary protection policies in Europe, Southeast Asia, Turkey and the United States, with a view to identifying elements that enhance and compromise the legality and viability of temporary protection regimes. Building on this analysis and legal limitations to the freedom of states to conceptualize different aspects of temporary protection, this book provides guidance to states on how to introduce and implement a viable temporary protection regime, which operates within the boundaries of international law and international human rights law.
