Is UNHCR becoming a migration agency? An analysis of UNHCR's engagement in ‘mixed movements’
Anja Klug (UNHCR)
Special seminars and lectures
Monday, 23 January 2012, 5pm to 6.30pm
Seminar Room 2, Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB
During the past years, UNHCR has been increasingly engaged in the broader debate on international migration. Especially UNHCR's 10-Point Plan on Refugee Protection and International Migration, which provides practical suggestions to assist States in developing comprehensive asylum and migration strategies, has raised concerns as regards its compliance with UNHCR's mandate, as well as the Organization's capacity to influence this complex area of policy.
The presentation analyses UNHCR's policies and activities in the interface between refugee protection and international migration, with an emphasis on the 10-Point Plan project. It addresses questions such as:
- What objective(s)did UNHCR pursue with its new approach and
- Were these achieved?
- Did the approach have any impact on UNHCR's mandate? Its working methodology? Its priority setting?
- How can this approach fill gaps in the international governance of migration?
- What next?
About the speaker
Anja Klug has been Head of the Asylum/Migration Unit at UNHCR in Geneva since 2010, having previously been based within the UNHCR Division of International Protection’s European Affairs office. She is widely recognised as an expert on the nexus between maritime law and refugee law. Anja has been the global focal point for the past five years of the UNHCR’s ‘Ten-Point Plan of Action’ and has extensive experience of negotiating more favourable protection standards and advocating humanitarian state responses. She studied law at the Universities of Bonn and Lausanne, and is a Member of the Association of the German Institute for Human Rights (Deutsches Institut für Menschenrechte (DIMR). Anja has published widely, and recent works include ‘Regional developments: Europe’, in Andreas Zimmermann (ed.), The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary (OUP: 2011) and (with Tim Howe), ‘The concept of state jurisdiction and the applicability of the non-refoulement principle to extraterritorial interception measures’, in Bernard Ryan and Valsamis Mitsilegas (eds.), Extraterritorial Immigration Control: Legal Challenges (Brill: 2010).