What is wrong with the Refugee Convention? Jordan's story

The world has been morphing, transforming and transiting in desire and discourse, grace and guidance, purpose and practicality, pace and propensity and terrorism and transcendentalism. But this transformation does not address the biggest contemporary challenges posed to international refugee law (IRL) in its present posturing. The national governments across the globe have given the cold shoulder to refugees in their itinerary of international obligations and duties as enunciated in the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) along with the vast pool of human rights instruments. However, international community has been performing its refugee mandate in an ostensible manner that is insufficient and contemptuous to their basic rights and dignity. Today, refugees have been grappling with scorn, suspicion and skepticism of national governments in their quest for durable solutions to human displacement and migration. But, unfortunately, refugees are being squeezed in the state practices which are reflected in their autonomy of sovereignty, foreign policy preferences, international relation controls and geo-strategic choices that undermined the dignity, equality and liberty of the refugees.

2019

The more there are conflicts, the more they generate a large number of refugees, the more a large number of refugees is spread out around the world, the more it becomes a global issue involving the entire international community. Nowadays, the protection of refugees has become a major problem states, international organizations and other refugees' agencies have been facing, so it can be seen as a continuous feature of international life in the present century. The aim of this article is to show the place of the protection of refugees in the international legal framework, which is International refugee law, governing refugee protection as a branch of international law, originating from the revolution in Russia and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War in Europe, causing mass movement of people. International law is not itself a solution to the problem of refugees and the challenges produced by migratory flow, but it can be a facilitator and a guide to the principled effectiveness of measures which states may take. The significance of this topic is perceived from the fact it remains a current one and a global issue involving all the states signing the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of the refugees.

International refugee law scholarship has long been dominated by a positivist tradition. Within this tradition, the human rights approach has now become the dominant approach. However, states and the formal agreements they agree to get us only so far in explaining how refugee law is created and how it develops. There is another layer of explanation that looks into transnational activities and their effect on how law is shaped, interpreted, applied and developed. This chapter therefore also explores two further emerging approaches in refugee law: the transnational approach and the participatory approach. It argues that whereas the dominant human rights approach focuses mainly on sources and contents of rules (and their enforcement), both the transnational and participatory approaches are useful in capturing the complexities of the process of law formation and law development by looking more specifically at networks and other participants in the process of law-making. The challenge of contemporary international refugee law is to recognise more explicitly the role of such networks and the soft-law and norms that they often produce.

Global Political Review, 2019

The article aims to investigate the legal framework of refugee protection system at regional and international level, which starts with the modern history of refugee system that when fleeing people from one region to another were considered as refugees. It further explores steps that were taken at the initial moment and how such system developed at the international level. The legal protection along with internationally accepted definition of refugees was achieved with the passage of time. The 1951 Refugee Convention is considered as the main foundation upon which the whole refugee system is based, was further augmented with the adoption of the 1967 Protocol, which removed the two main objections i.e. the temporal and geographical limitations from the Convention. The article explains the refugee definition, protections available under various instruments at regional and international level to refugees.

Berkeley Journal of International Law, 2012

Many scholars of international refugee law assert that there is no definition of refugee under international law except that given in the Refugee Convention. This assertion, however, overlooks the dynamic way that the Refugee Convention is interpreted and is usually made without a detailed analysis of customary international law. This article attempts to address this shortcoming in the literature by examining conventional and customary international law contributing to the contemporary definition of refugee. Furthermore, it will attempt to do this is an even-handed manner, concluding that the definition has expanded in favor of claimants in some aspects, but, actually, contracted against the favor of claimants in others. First, the article will examine the definition of refugee under the Refugee Convention, especially the evolving technique for interpreting the Convention, to determine whether the definition has outgrown its conventional shell. Second, the article will undertake a comprehensive analysis of state practice and opinio juris on this question, examining the most up-to-date sources. In particular, it will reflect on the role of specially interested or specially affected states in the formation of customary international law and the growth of “subsidiary” protection. Also the article will consider the contribution of the practice and opinio juris of international organizations in the frame of the contemporary international law’s understanding of the contribution international organizations can make. Lastly, the article will look at the opposite side of the coin: the ways in which customary international law may have narrowed the definition beyond the terms of the Refugee Convention. It will conclude by proposing the new definition of a refugee under conventional and customary international law based on the findings.

International Journal of Refugee Law, 2015

The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and its 1967 Protocol, and many other important international instruments recognize the unique role the UNHCR plays in protecting refugees and supervising international refugee law. This in-depth analysis of the UNHCR's supervisory role in the international refugee protection regime examines the part played by key institutions, organizations and actors in the supervision of international refugee law. It provides suggestions and recommendations on how the UNHCR's supervisory role can be strengthened to ensure greater States Parties' compliance with their obligations under these international refugee rights treaties, and contributes to enhancing the international protection of refugees and to the promotion of a democratic global governance of the international refugee protection regime.

The recent North African and Middle East crises have created gap in absorptive capacity or resulted to absorptive-refugee gap. Thus, resulting to the incapacity of the host countries to absorb all the refugees, and in turn leading to refugee crisis in the Middle East and North Africa. Consequently, refugees often face substantial difficulties in seeking asylum because the receiving states are wary of the burden of influx of refugees. Restrictions and limitations and other exclusionary policies are placed by many states to discourage asylum seekers. The paper recommends repositioning the UN and regional organizations to be proactive in peace building, conflict prevention and management through democratization, good governance and transparency and public accountability necessary for avoiding war that threw up refugees.

2018

In recent times, the UNHCR has been accused of railing in the fulfilment of its mandate as provided for under its statute. However, the entirety of fault is not to be borne by the UNHCR, owing to the fact that the Agency relies on laws drali:ed for a different time. The main aim of this research is to investigate vvhether there is a need for reform of the international refugee law regime. The objects of the study were to distinguish the circumstances that led to the formation ofthe 1951 Convention l'rom the prevailing ci rcumstances and to estab lish the role of the UN HCR in the enforcement and development of international refugee law, in a bid to determine the applicabi lity or the existent laws to the modern refugee crisis.

Nordic Journal of International Law, 1990

Owing to the complexity of societies and the increased contact which comes with intensified relations in our globalized world, the need for rules become necessary for the promotion of international cooperation and development and the avoidance of conflict and chaos. More so, the conflicts and wars stemming from the relationship between countries leave in their wake problems like refugee crises that international law necessarily has to try to handle. The mandate of international law is thus to promote and protect human rights at the international, regional and domestic level. This study examines the relevance of international law in protecting the right of refugees through the use secondary sources of data. The study underscores the fact that through the instrumentality of modern refugee law, which has its origin in the aftermath of the 2 nd world war, countries have been granting protection to individuals and groups fleeing persecution for centuries as refugees. These elaborate legal frameworks were examined using the liberal theory of international relations. The study found that despite the existence of the international refugee regime, a lot still needs to be done since states as the primary enforcers of refugee laws are reluctant to adhere and observe these rules to the letter. Similarly, the study also discovered that factors like the changing nature of the conflict, bourgeoning number of refugees and legal and operational difficulties in the definition of refugees have served as obstacles that have made it difficult for states to dispense their responsibilities under the extant regime. In closing, the study recommends measures like good governance and that more specific definition of states responsibility with respect to refugees and support for states that are confronted with a large number of refugees.