Refugee Law

Proposes a variety of legal, organizational, and humanitarian solutions. [On-campus link for Refugee and Refugee Law in a World in Transition.]

"This article promotes the more traditional concept of international law (as dealing with inter-state rights and obligations) as a key to the problem of the refugee. Its thesis is that the humanitarian premise of refugee law seriously limits, and even undermines, constructive response to the problem of the refugee, and that the problem becomes more manageable the more it is treated as a problem of relations and obligations among states. This article calls for a new foundation for refugee law built upon the fundamental principle of international law that every state is obligated to respect the territorial integrity and rights of other states…."

"This paper focuses on the responsibilities of the source countries under international law to compensate refugees and countries of asylum. … Emphasis is placed on how existing international institutions can facilitate the payment of compensation within the framework of the generally accepted principles of international as well as municipal law." [On-campus link for The Right to Compensation: Refugees and Countries of Asylum - Lee.]

A proposal with two main elements. "First, a group of states would agree to observe a strong norm of proportional burden-sharing for refugees, would seek to induce other states to join the group…. Second, the participating states would then be permitted to trade their quotas by paying others to fulfill their obligations."

The authors "argue for a shift to a solution- oriented temporary protection of refugees, conceived within a framework of common but differentiated responsibility among states."

The authors "question several of the fundamental assumptions" of the Hathaway/Neve and Schuck articles. They "regretfully conclude that neither article adequately identifies the crucial defects in the current system for refugee protection and that neither proposal has a realistic chance of implementation in the spirit of refugee protection the authors envision.… and that “the proposals will have the practical effect of de-emphasizing the existing protection responsibilities of states toward refugees under international law, and thus risk aggravating the failures of protection that the authors wish to cure." [On-campus link for Crisis and Cure: A Reply to Hathaway/Neve and Schuck - Anker et al..]

Summary of discussions from the 2001 UNHCR Global Consultations on International Protection.

"This chapter of an edited book reviews a 1997 article in the Yale Journal of International Law in which I proposed a system for distributing refugee protection burdens on a regional basis through a system of tradable refugee protection quotas. The chapter describes how this proposal was received and some analogous developments in refugee protection policies in other parts of the world."

New York Times Op-Ed arguing that Europe "should create and regulate a market in which states can buy and sell all or part of their protection quota obligations."

The unprecedented scale of the modern refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries from creating refugees, and encourages other countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. "Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already exist. In short, international law can and should give refugees a legal asset, give host nations incentives to accept them, and give oppressive countries of origin the bill."

"The author argues that the time is right to change the way that refugee law is implemented. Specifically, Hathaway advocates a shift towards a managed and collectivized approach to the implementation of refugee protection obligations. He contends that while the obligations under the Convention remain sound, the mechanisms for implementing those obligations are flawed in ways that too often lead States to act against their own values and interests, and which produce needless suffering amongst refugees. The author concludes with a five-point plan to revitalize the Refugee Convention."

2016 TED Talk by Alexander Betts of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre.

A brief summary of the 2-day experts' workshop held at the University of British Columbia in July 2016. The Vancouver Principles emerged from this workshop.