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Civilian protection in Sri Lanka under threat
The papers by Benson and Fonseka are based on presentations given at the September 2009 conference hosted by the RSC on Protecting People in Conflict and Crisis: Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World. The paper by Satkunanathan was presented in a follow-up roundtable discussion on Post War Future in Sri Lanka hosted by the RSC and the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity. These papers contribute to the debate on humanitarianism and civilian protection. They discuss the contradictions, tensions, ambiguities and dilemmas of UN and international organisations in protecting civilians in times of conflict. Benson describes UNHCR's work on both needs and rights in Sri Lanka during the peace process, particularly with regards to IDPs, at a time when the organisation's mandate was expanding to cover more rights-based protection. Satkunanathan's paper describes the tension faced by the agencies between addressing protection and assistance needs of the displaced population. Finally, Fonseka's paper is a useful summary of the dilemmas and constraints faced by humanitarian workers and NGOs within the post-war situation, and highlights many of the problems faced by activists who are working inside Sri Lanka.
The securitization of asylum: protecting UK residents
This paper examines the concept of the securitization of asylum and its potential effects on the human security of the resident population of the United Kingdom. By focusing on the effects of securitization on members of the host community rather than refugees, this paper represents a perspective that has not received a great deal of attention in the existing body of literature. While it is often assumed that security measures are undertaken for the good of the resident population, it is important to note that fear is also a risk that must be taken into account. This paper argues that the association of asylum seekers with terrorism in public discourse in the UK could potentially lead to a decrease, rather than an increase, in the human security of the resident population by exacerbating their fears of both asylum seekers and terrorism.
Did 9/11 matter? Securitisation of asylum and migration in the European Union from 1992 to 2008
This paper analyses the effect of 9/11 on securitization of asylum and immigration in the EU from 1992 to 2008 at the supranational level. It explores the assumption that 9/11 did in fact change asylum and immigration policies. Additionally, it offers an interpretation of how asylum and migration in the EU have been securitized, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the process of securitization. Briefly, this paper finds that the escalated securitization manifested both qualitative and quantitative change. For instance, quantitative change is found in political discourse and qualitative change is identified in the establishment of a permanent state of emergency. Finally, given its regional focus, this paper aids the understanding of the integration and supranationalization of asylum and immigration policies within the EU.
Prima facie determination of refugee legal status: an overview of its legal foundation
The objective of this paper is to clarify the use of PFRSD in practice and explore its legal foundation. It argues that the term ‘prima facie’ should be understood in refugee law as a shorthand reference to the general law relating to injunctions. That is, ‘prima facie’ is shorthand for a lower standard of proof, rather than a shifted burden of proof. PFRS can therefore be conceived as a quia timet injunction granted, in haste and ex parte, at the discretion of the host State with both prohibitory and mandatory elements. The injunction persists until, but is without prejudice to, RSD that considers exclusion and non-inclusion from Convention protection. The paper finds that this injunctive conception is founded in the Convention, accords with State and UNHCR practice, and clarifies the rights attached to PFRS. The paper ends by suggesting that PFRSD practice beclarified by way of an Executive Committee conclusion.
How long is too long? Questioning the legality of long-term encampment through a human rights lens
While encampment has become one of the most common methods of dealing with large scale refugee flows, the reality is that the word “camp” is not mentioned in the 1951 Convention, and it appears as though the framers did not envision encampment to become a common response to displacement. This paper will question the legality of LTE on the grounds that it denies refugees’ basic human rights in an arbitrary and discriminatory way, and is therefore inconsistent with international human rights law. Additionally, it will explore an argument for placing time limits on rights restrictions in camp settings, following the three-year limit set out in Article 17 of the Convention as a point of departure. It will argue that not only would time limits on rights restrictions enable a closer adherence to international law, but that they may also improve conditions for refugees, host states and regional actors.
Displaced adolescent girls’ protection: could casuistry be a methodology for humanitarians?
This paper analyses the practice of marrying displaced adolescent girls and critically explores the application of casuistry to this protection issue. It illustrates how the dominant conceptualization of early marriages has failed to embed ethical and livelihoods dimensions. When considered alongside the lack of agency of displaced adolescent girls, the gaps in this conceptualization have contributed to inefficient protection interventions. This paper demonstrates how group casuistry may address such gaps by emphasizing the values of stakeholders as well as the circumstances in which early marriages occur. This methodology allows displaced adolescent girls to exert more influence in decision-making. Finally, this paper discusses how group casuistry might facilitate various linkages and contribute to, for instance, connecting universality and contextuality in interventions.
Understanding and addressing the phenomenon of 'child soldiers'
This paper investigates how the well-intentioned global humanitarian discourse on child soldiers may be disregarding the complex local understandings and experiences of military recruitment. It seeks to present a compelling case for a wholesale re-conceptualisation of the phenomenon of ‘child soldiers’ so as to devise aid programmes that can better reflect and respond to local understandings, priorities, and needs. This paper takes on both global and local levels of analysis and draw from a wide array of literature, including those from the fields of human rights, child development, political economy, anthropology, and various policy documents and reports of humanitarian and human rights organisations.
Family reunification: a right for forced migrants?
This paper attempts to shed light on some of the core issues surrounding family reunification. In doing so, it examines the family in a forced migration context and engages in a discussion of the nature of the family to identify who is being reunified. Additionally, it looks at family reunification from an international law perspective and asks: Is there an international legal right to family reunification? On what basis does such a right rely? How expansive is it? To explain the reluctance of states to acknowledge reunification rights, this paper also discusses the political aspects of reunification and situates in within the wider context of immigration. Finally, this paper examines alternative approaches to family reunification, to re-centre it within a rights optic.
UNHCR as an autonomous organisation: Complex operations and the case of Kosovo
This study takes an analytical and empirical approach to assess how the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) demonstrated organizational autonomy in the face of realpolitik and member state interests. It uses as its case study the one year period (June 1999-June 2000) the organization was part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. UNHCR’s role in Kosovo is central to a discussion of international organizational autonomy because it raises questions about the nature and role of humanitarian organisations in state building operations. This paper argues that UNHCR exercised autonomy using three strategies: first, through its utilisation of authority (delegated, moral and expert); second, through exploitation of information asymmetries; and finally, through manipulation of stakeholder incentives and the ability to play stakeholder interests off one another.
Salah Sheekh is a refugee: new insights into primary and subsidiary forms of protection
This paper explores the limits of 'subsidiary' or 'complementary' protection, with particular emphasis on how the concept is applied within the European Communities [EC] legal order. Seeking light in obscure places, it argues that recent developments in EC law, as well as the evolving jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, can be construed positively as dispelling confusion between differently motivated claims to international protection. Should ambiguity prevail, however, these developments may well signal the emergence of a regional 'asylum law', calling into question the continuing relevance of the universal legal framework enshrined in the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol.
State, nation, citizen: rethinking repatriation
This paper offers a historical contextualisation of the political concepts underpinning repatriation. It demonstrates that the difficulty in understanding repatriation as a “solution” to displacement results from attempting to reconcile a political philosophy of universal human rights with the principle of nation-state sovereignty. The paper argues that post-1985 attempts to reconceptualise repatriation were flawed largely because repatriation was depoliticised into “return”, reducing the likelihood of durable solutions based on citizenship and the remaking of state-citizen bonds. Using empirical evidence from the case of Guatemalan return from January 1993, this paper argues that recognition of more direct and politicised refugee engagement in displacement resolution offers an opportunity to strengthen concepts of refugee dignity and the durability of return. Moreover, it suggests a community-based approach that recognises the collective political identities of refugee groups may offer greater possibility for state transformation through repatriation than individually-based return, as well as greater possibility for the expression of “dignity” than that of “voluntariness”.
Conflict-induced migration and remittances: exploring conceptual frameworks
Remittances – the money that migrants send home – are a key element in the socioeconomic reality of many conflict-affected and post-conflict countries. However, conceptual frameworks for explaining the dynamics of remittances in conflict-affected settings are lagging behind emerging empirical evidence. This paper first explores relevant conceptual models from the literature on labour migration, and outlines some of their limitations. Second, it focuses on aspects of conflict-induced migration – specifically, the causation of migration, the situation of family left behind and the post-migration situation of refugees – that may have implications for the remittance behaviour of those affected.
‘Voluntary repatriation’ and the case of Afghanistan: a critical examination
This paper examines the dimensions of choice and agency for refugees in ‘voluntary repatriation’ in the case of Afghanistan. Specifically focusing on the voluntary aspect of ‘voluntary’ repatriation, it explores its validity, meaning and practice in relation to legal and political dynamics. It argues that UNHCR as well as host countries have employed measures and practices that have largely ‘induced’ the return of Afghan refugees, rather than having allowed them to decide according to their own free will. Moreover, it demonstrates how the voluntary decision-making of refugees as a requirement for voluntary repatriation has been incorporated into UNHCR practice to suit the agency’s institutional practice, thereby limiting refugees’ free choices and options regarding repatriation.The analysis of this paper draws primarily on academic literature from various disciplinary perspectives and incorporates NGO reports, news reports, as well as a vast array of UNHCR documentation.
Displacement in the 2006 Dili crisis: dynamics of an ongoing conflict
This paper explores the relationship between conflict and displacement as dynamics of social change through an examination of the defining features of the Dili crisis – displacement, regional identities, and repertoires of low-level violence. It seeks to show how the Timorese population negotiates new, and at times devastating, realities. One expression of this is the adoption of regional identities during the crisis. It argues that the sometimes violent ‘crisis dynamics’ will bring about profound societal changes that are likely to outlive any political deadlock at the top. This deadlock is typically understood as defining the ‘crisis’. In opening up the scope of what the crisis is about, this paper simultaneously attempts to highlight particular dynamics that are embedded in a liberal framework.
Unprotected among brothers: Palestinians in the Arab world
This paper aims to trace the political and legal ripple effects of the Nakbah – the mass displacement of Palestinians from historic Palestine beginning in 1948 – for those refugees who found refuge in Arab states outside the bounds of international attempts at their assistance and protection. It will present a legal and political analysis of ‘protection gaps’ – in short, the lack of international and national protection that should, in principle, be guaranteed to all refugees. In doing so, this paper explores the relation between the foreign policy agendas of autocratic Arab states and their domestic policies, which are aimed at controlling and, often, marginalizing Palestinian refugees. It argues for a layered and intertwined political and legal analysis, with particular emphasis on the impact of autocratic governance on human rights and the role of foreign policy in host state treatment of Palestinians.
Repatriation and reconciliation in divided societies: the case of Rwanda’s ‘Ingando’
This study shows that the nationalist script of de-ethnicization is based on a simplistic binary opposition and remains weak for the same reason why it is intriguing: De-ethnicization is a ‘minority’ project, forbidding and prescribing certain forms of expression and association, while not creating a concomitant attractor in the form of equal participation in state-building and ‘state-sharing’. This paper delineates the ‘repatriation-reconciliation nexus’ and explores the notion of reconciliation-cum-nation building. Moreover, it analyses de-ethnicization as a political project with roots, agents and scripts; assess the major factors that undermine de-ethnicization; and propose an alternative that might avoid its costs. Finally, this paper calls for a more nuanced understanding of ‘post-genocide plurality’, which accommodates yet supersedes difference as an ordering principle in political interaction.
Dynamics of conflict and displacement in Papua, Indonesia
This document presents a collection of papers developed in preparation for a one-day workshop held under the auspices of the Refugee Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford on 26 October 2006. This was the fourth in a series of RSC workshops to focus on conflict, violence and displacement in Southeast Asia organized at Oxford by Dr Eva-Lotta Hedman (Senior Research Fellow). Like previous such workshops, which examined issues of conflict and displacements in Aceh under martial law, southern Philippines and south Thailand, and Burma, the day of analysis devoted to Papua brought together perspectives and expertise from among a range of institutional contexts, including academic and advocacy, practitioner and policy.
Free movement and the movement’s forgotten freedoms: South African representation of undocumented migrants
This paper studies the South African media’s representation of undocumented migrants from 1998 to 2005. Recent literature that deals with media discourse on migration has focused on concepts of ‘nation-building’ and the emergence of a ‘risk society’. This work builds on these themes by examining the relationship between the media’s legitimation of state immigration control and South Africa’s unique historical tradition of struggle. Contemporary journalists often encounter evidence of similarities between citizens’ experiences of segregation during the Apartheid era and the government’s recent treatment of undocumented migrants. However, reports tend to deny the moral and practical relevance of this uncomfortable likeness by representing contemporary undocumented migration as a new and subversive threat. The paper suggests that anti-Apartheid sentiments constitute a vital, albeit hidden, discursive resource for critics of contemporary immigration controls.
Return in dignity: a neglected protection challenge
This paper examines how the concept of return in ‘safety and dignity’ emerged and has been applied to processes of refugee return. In doing so, it highlights incongruities about the meaning of return in practice, particularly in terms of dignity. Moreover, it identifies key components of the notion of dignity that should figure centrally in internationally-supported repatriation processes, namely, the principle of refugee choice and the need to redress the injustices that cause and characterise displacement. This paper suggests that pinning down a narrow institutional definition of dignity would not necessarily serve the interests of returnees. However, it argues that the concept of dignified return merits greater debate amongst policy makers, scholars, refugee advocates and displaced communities to make it a sharper protection tool.
Burma: the changing nature of displacement crises
The shifting nature of conflict in Burma over the past fifteen years has structured a range of inter-linked displacement crises. This paper identifies three main types of forced migration within and from the country: armed conflict-induced displacement, state/society-induced displacement, and livelihood/vulnerability-induced displacement. This paper argues that internal displacement in Burma is the product not only of armed conflict in the insurgent-prone eastern borderlands, but also of decades of mis-governance by the militarized state.