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Security and protection
A concern with security can undermine protection in important ways, though the discourse of protection can be manipulated by those with a security agenda. War (especially a ‘good war’) confers a degree of legitimacy (and legality) for various kinds of violence. The more ‘legitimate’ a particular military endeavour appears to be (and the more the enemy has been demonised), the more opportunities there are likely to be for violence and exploitation under the cover of this legitimacy. The positioning of a civil war within some kind of ‘global war’ (the Cold War, the ‘war on terror’) helps to create ‘windows of impunity’ for powerful local actors, many of them governmental. At any given moment in any given place, a particular ‘enemy’ (perhaps more than one) will be identified, and protection problems are likely to accumulate around this definition of the security problem. There is also likely to be a favoured instrument (or perhaps more than one) for addressing the crisis (defeating spoilers, deploying peacekeepers, delivering relief etc.). The designation of enemies and the commitment to favoured solutions may both create major protection problems as certain kinds of violence are tolerated in the interest of some ‘wider’ or ‘more pressing’ goal. Weighing advocacy against relief delivery is always difficult. But we should consider the possibility that de-emphasising advocacy emboldens abusive parties on the ground so that humanitarian space shrinks over time. Abusive parties are learning lessons fast about how to manipulate information flows surrounding conflicts; the international humanitarian community needs to speed up its ‘lesson learning’ accordingly.
The administration of refugees in Zambia
This paper will briefly discuss the legal system and refugee situation in Zambia. The paper will then highlight the various international and regional refugee and human rights instruments to which Zambia is a party. Domestic legislation that addresses refugees will be analysed and pertinent provisions will be emphasised. The Refugee Bill 2008 which is draft legislation will also be examined to determine whether it improves on existing legislation or not. Zambia has two parallel RSD procedures, and both will be explained. Furthermore, there will be an examination of select refugee rights and durable solutions. The paper will conclude with recommendations.
Refugee status determination and refugee rights in Tanzania
Tanzania gained its independence from British colonial rule on 9 December 1961. Since her independence, Tanzania has been an independent territory having a common law legal system similar to the British one, which has been undergoing modifications from time to time to suit local circumstances. In addition, Tanzania is a dualist state, meaning that all international instruments to which Tanzania accedes must necessarily be ratified1 by the parliament to form part of the domestic legal system. Under the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania of 1977 (hereinafter, the Constitution), the rule of law concept is clearly reflected in the principle of separation of powers.2 Whereas, the fundamental principles reflected in this concept are the supremacy of parliament, independence of the judiciary and observance of human rights by the executive. These are the bases that form the three pillars of the state, i.e., the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. In practice, however, the executive is de facto more powerful as compared to the rest, which, more often than not, makes the executive override the powers of the legislature and the judiciary. Nevertheless, the judiciary enjoys enormous powers that are guaranteed by the Constitution. And, in practice, the judiciary has been at the forefront of defending the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, as part of guaranteeing the right to access to justice. The right of access to justice is a fundamental right, which is also part and parcel of the rule of law.
Refugee status determination in South Africa
This paper outlines the situation in which the asylum system operates in South Africa and its connection to the immigration system. It raises certain challenges within the asylum system and recommends policy changes, which could be used to address these challenges.
Refugee status determination and rights in Malawi
Malawi has been both a producer and recipient of refugees from its neighbours in the last three decades. In the early 1960s and 1970s, followers of the Jehova’s witness religion were forced to flee the country, mostly into Zambia after their religious beliefs clashed with the ruling Malawi Congress Party ideologies. Scores of people also left Malawi fleeing political persecution to neighbouring countries during the same period of one party rule under the Malawi Congress Party. On the other hand, Malawi has been receiving refugees from Mozambique, initially during the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, and hosted over one million Mozambican refugees between the 1980s and early 1990s when the Frelimo government and Renamo opposition movement were engaged in a highly destructive civil war. The influx of Mozambican refugees is believed to have forced Malawi to rush the process of ratifying the relevant international refugee instruments as well as drafting the Refugee Act, which came into force in 1989. Currently, Malawi continues to receive refugees, mainly from the Great Lakes region and the horn of Africa, and issues of refugee rights which were relevant during that period when it hosted over a million refugees remain important. This paper highlights the situation of refugee rights in Malawi, including the refugee status determination (RSD) mechanisms and process. The first part of the paper presents an introduction including country background and a brief overview of the legal system. Section two focuses on the refugee conventions and international human rights instruments that Malawi has ratified. The section also discusses the impact of international law on the domestic legal system. The domestic refugee framework is discussed in full detail in section three. The section highlights the provisions of the 1989 Refugee Act as well as RSD mechanisms. It also discusses the impact of reservations to international instruments and the outdated Refugee Act on the enjoyment of rights by people who seek protection in Malawi. Section four submits recommendations and conclusions.
An overview of refugee status determination and the rights of refugees in Kenya
This paper details the workings of Refugee Status Determination (RSD) and the protection of refugee rights in Kenya, beginning with a broad outlook on the development of refugee law in Kenya and then critiquing the current laws and practices in place that affect the success or failure of RSD and the protection of refugee rights.
Responsibility to protect
In 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that world leaders at the United Nations World Summit had unanimously pledged, “to act if another Rwanda looms.” Specifically, they agreed that states have a responsibility to protect their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. They also concluded that if a state is manifestly failing to protect its population, the international community has a responsibility to protect, including through the use of force should peaceful means prove ineffective. Their adoption of the responsibility to protect (R2P) offered a vision of a new international norm premised on state responsibility and nonindifference towards populations at risk of mass atrocities. This July, the General Assembly debated R2P for the first time since 2005. Member states signaled their enduring commitment to the goal, as well as some of the political and practical challenges that lie ahead. The successful debate marked another milestone in making this vision a reality even if R2P in many ways remains an emerging norm. The task ahead is to consolidate the achievements to date and instantiate the norm, thereby filling gaps in capacity, will and imagination and moving from rhetoric to saving lives. This paper examines the political evolution of R2P, and recommends strategies to ensure that practices and policies are put in place that will prevent and halt mass atrocity crimes.
Protection, human rights and forced migration
The keynote address begins with a discussion on the role of the international human rights system in the protection of people who are displaced either within the borders of a country or forced to cross national borders in order to seek refuge from conflict situations. It explores the extent to which protection premised on the international human rights system has been streamlined within international mechanisms for protection. Some of the jurisprudence of human rights bodies relating to such protection is highlighted. The address then turns to the problem of non-compliance with international human rights norms by States Parties to international treaties and conventions. By implication this raises the question of the effectiveness of the current protection system in the face of impunity by governments and when fundamental political, economic and social problems inherent in conflict situations have not been resolved. A brief account of the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan is given as an example of such impunity. The last part draws attention to the challenge of providing protection in an urban setting in South Africa in the context of xenophobic attacks and the ensuing displacement of refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, labour migrants and undocumented migrants.
Protection: the new humanitarian fig-leaf
The human rights-based approach (HRBA) has filtered into humanitarian action over the past decade. In tangible fashion, this shift has provided guidance and standards for aid itself. Beneficiaries have become something greater than populations in need of assistance – they have become sets of individuals possessing rights. HRBA thinking thus transforms the wants/needs of people in crisis into obligations demanding a response. Given that we humanitarians are often the only ones on the ground interested in or in a position to provide such a response, the impact of HRBA has radically changed the discursive framework under which humanitarian action is performed.
The politics of protection
The dramatic progress of the global relief system in recent years has meant that generally we no longer have massive causalities, as we did only a decade ago, from lack of basic food, shelter and medicines. But millions of vulnerable civilians from conflict areas continue to remain gravely at risk as humanitarian protection remains a major weakness of the international response system. The author1 argues that, despite all the efforts that have been made, the international system has been unable to substantially improve effective protection for civilian conflict victims. In this paper, the author suggests some reasons why he thinks this is so and what might be done about it. He approaches the subject by highlighting issues such as responsibility and intervention, the protection architecture with its different actors, as well as the challenges of implementation. He suggests that although the protection of civilians is fundamentally linked to political and security issues it is frequently dealt with as a separate aspect of this broader equation. There was also a need to deal more effectively with non-state actors who are party to many current conflicts. UN peacekeeping mandates and resources for civilian protection needed to be strengthened and UN protection agencies needed to be more proactive. He concludes that there has been major progress in the last decade regarding civilian protection at the international level but this has not led to more effective protection in the field. However, progress has provided an exceptional window for much more effective implementation of basic safeguards than we have seen to date.
Conceptualising protection as safety: a normative proposal
The Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stipulates, inter alia, that UNHCR ‘shall assume the function of providing international protection, under the auspices of the United Nations, to refugees who fall under the present Statute…’ The expression ‘international protection’ also features prominently in official documents of UNHCR, and in state practice. Often referred in its short form as simply ‘protection’, it has also been used in relations to persons displaced within their countries because of conflict or those fleeing droughts, famine, or floods. What is meant by international protection? What are its conceptual content and boundaries? The Statute of UNHCR, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, several resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations on refugees and displaced persons, the official documents of UNHCR and of states parties to the 1951 Convention are silent on these central questions. While the issues of refugee rights, legal and institutional problems of protection, including protection of people at risk in conflict situations, and how the policies and practices of states and UNHCR affect refugees and other persons of concern have received attention in the literature, there has been no attempt to conceptualise international protection and ground it in the experiences of refugees and other persons of concern to UNHCR and the international community. The objective of this paper is twofold: firstly, to explain the concept of international protection of refugees and other displaced persons that currently informs – if somewhat implicitly – the work with refugees and displaced persons, tracing its historical evolution to two central formative phases, the inter-war period and the years after the end of World War II; and secondly, to propose a normative framework on the proper conceptual approach to the international protection of refugees. It is argued that a conceptualisation of the idea of international protection of refugees that provides a framework distinguishing between the means and the ends of protection is needed; in other words, a concept of international protection that transcends the idea of law and institutions as protection and that defines a vision, a goal, or an overarching objective, which mobilises law, institutions, materials, and politics as inter-related means or vehicles for fulfilling and reaching that vision and overarching objective.
Protecting People in Conflict and Crisis: Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World
Ten years ago the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) defined humanitarian protection as including “all activities aimed at obtaining full respect for the rights of the individual in accordance with the letter and spirit of the relevant bodies of law (i.e. human rights, humanitarian and refugee law).” Since then humanitarian protection has received growing attention within the humanitarian sector, becoming not one of the central aims of the international community but also one of its greatest challenges. This conference, which was hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) in collaboration with the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) and with generous support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, convened over 180 participants from more than 40 countries to discuss the current state of humanitarian protection research, policy and practice, with a view to developing new ideas for the protection of people in conflict and crisis in the 21st century. The conference revolved around six thematic tracks: concepts of protection; the politics of protection; populations at risk; protection, security and the military; national and regional responsibilities to protect; protection in practice. Eighty-four papers were presented and it is impossible to represent the depth, richness and complexity of the debates that took place. With that in mind however, a number of key themes emerged strongly, particularly around the challenges faced by humanitarian practitioners seeking to deliver ‘protection’ in a hostile world and the role which academics could play in addressing these challenges. The text below provides some reflections of those themes.
Humanitarian Action in Somalia: Expanding Humanitarian Space
In line with the overarching objectives of the Refugee Studies Centre, this workshop aimed to bring together representatives from the communities of ‘Research, Policy and Practice’ for a constructive dialogue on the subject of humanitarian space in Somalia. The participants at the workshop reflected this and included academics with a wide range of specialities, policy advisors and representatives of donor governments, as well as staff from several humanitarian agencies. The workshop also included a number of representatives from the Somali diaspora community, Somali money transfer organisations and Islamic NGO’s working in Somalia, thereby enabling an important exchange of ideas from a wide range of perspectives. The specific aim of the workshop was to map out the main challenges facing humanitarian actors in Somalia, to examine the methods that such actors are using to address humanitarian needs in the country, and to consider how the humanitarian community might better expand humanitarian space through innovative approaches to both policy and practice. This workshop report follows the format of the workshop, providing a brief overview of the main challenges faced by humanitarian agencies and of the innovative methods used by these agencies to provide humanitarian relief in Somalia. The report then provides an overview of the role played by Islamic charities and the Somali diaspora, as well as the media, before finally presenting the main outcomes of the workshop and proposing possible ways forward.
Refugees’ Diasporic Memories and the Politics of Democratisation
This report analyses the main themes arising from the presentations and discussions at the ‘Refugees’ Diasporic Memories and the Politics of Democratisation’ workshop organised by the International Migration Institute and Refugee Studies Centre on 18 February 2011.
The least provocative path: an ANT lens on development project formation and dissolution
This paper uses Actor‐Network Theory to examine the success and failure of development projects. Rejecting the common view that projects succeed on the basis of their superior objectives, planning and implementation, the paper proposes an alternative perspective drawn from Actor‐Network Theory: that success or failure is a product of the alliances that are mobilised, rather than the inherent qualities that are possessed. This argument is illustrated with reference to a 1970s development project, which involved the extraction of protein from plant leaves in order to provide a nutritional supplement for diets in Nigeria. By drawing on archival sources, the paper reconstructs the main actors involved in the project, analyses what caused them to become involved, and then turns attention to how these alliances fell apart. This paper is the third in the Actor-Network Theory for Development working paper series, published by the Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester.
What I did on my holidays, or: the use of debating in Rwandan civic education
In July 2009, 30 university students (15 from 5 Rwandan universities and 15 from the University of Melbourne, Australia) met for a human rights workshop in Kigali. None of the Rwandan participants were aware of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Rwanda is a signatory, and only a few had vague ideas about the existence and the provisions of Rwanda’s 2003 Constitution and the specific laws and policies that were enacted to address human rights in the country. Rwandan youth participants in similar workshops organized in 2006, 2007, and 2008 also lacked a basic understanding of human rights. It should be stressed that Rwandans of this age that are able to go to university and participate in English-speaking events will be some of the most privileged in this country, and as those attending such events will have self-selected, it is not unreasonable to assume that these were some of the most politicised (and, one would think, politically aware) young Rwandans in the country. If a democracy is only as robust as its citizens, Rwanda is in trouble. The purpose of this piece is to review the creation and promulgation of a debating programme which evolved in response to this sort of worrying finding. Debating is used in Rwanda as part of a broader programme of civic awareness and advocacy conducted by a Rwandan NGO, Never Again Rwanda (hereafter NAR) from March 2011. This work is based on fieldwork conducted by the author (shown in fig. 1) in Rwanda in spring of 2010 (when the programme was devised) and spring 2011 (when I was fortunate enough to be present for the inaugural Rwandan Schools’ Debating Championships).
Book Review: New writing on Rwanda
Will Jones reviews two books on Rwanda for St Antony's International Review: ''The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice, and Reconciliation in Rwanda', by Phil Clark, and 'Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence', by Scott Strauss and Lars Waldorf (eds).
Truth Commissions and NGOs: The Essential Relationship
This paper aims to address the question, "What advice would you give to colleague NGOs in countries where the momentum for the establishment of a truth commission is already strong?" It is intended to provide basic guidance to NGOs that are likely to engage with formal, official truth commissions established by the state during times of political transition. It is organized chronologically into three sections: before, during, and after the operation of a truth commission.
Book Review: Transnational & Comparative Criminology
As is argued elsewhere in the reviews for this issue, criminology has been somewhat complacent in the acceptance of a framework for comparative analysis that is all too often restricted to the British Isles, European Union, or - for the adventurous - North America and Canada. In Transnational and Comparative Criminology, James Sheptycki and Ali Wardak present a convincing case for a less parochial perspective.