Blog post written by Dr Dana Schmalz, a Research Affiliate of the RLI and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen. (more…)
Blog post written by Professor Etienne Piguet (University of Neuchâtel), Vice President of CFM/EKM (Federal Commission on Migration FCM). (more…)
Blog post written by Jenny Poon, a Research Affiliate of the Refugee Law Initiative, a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, a qualified Barrister & Solicitor in the Province of Ontario, as well as a Visiting Study Fellow at the University of Oxford, Refugee Studies Centre for Trinity Term 2017. The author may be reached at jpoonlaw@gmail.com. (more…)
Blog post written by Paolo Biondi, a RLI Research Affiliate and current PhD student at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. (more…)
Blog post written by Dr Moira Dustin, Research Fellow, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex. This contribution has been produced within the context of the project ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum: A European human rights challenge –SOGICA’ (www.sogica.org). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 677693). This post is published as a contribution to Refugee Week 2017.
Blog post written by Dr. Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler, Associate Professor in International Refugee Law at the School of Law, University of Reading. Ruvi is also Editor-in-Chief of the Refugee Law Initiative Working Paper Series. Ruvi will present on the ‘Crisis, Cross-border Mobility and State Responses in Europe and Latin America’ panel at the upcoming RLI 2nd Annual Conference. The full conference programme is available here.
In recent years, we have witnessed a European Union struggling to forge a common approach to the admission of onward movement of prospective ‘beneficiaries of international protection’ (BiP), which include 1951 Geneva Convention refugees and those grated ‘subsidiary protection status’ (Qualification Directive (Recast) Article 2), prompting calls by Guy Goodwin-Gill and others for the creation of a European Refugee and Migration Agency. (more…)
Blog post written by Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple University) who will both chair and present on the ‘Mass Migrant Flows, International Obligation and Internal Resistance: Trump’s Executive Orders in Critical Perspective’ panel at the upcoming RLI 2nd Annual Conference. The full conference programme is available here.
In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has enacted dramatic political theater and rhetoric as well as harsh new policies targeting refugees and migrants in the United States. Immigration restrictionism was a – if not the – central plank of Trump’s campaign. Within a week of his inauguration, Trump promulgated three Executive Orders aimed at preventing the entry of asylum seekers from Central America and refugees from Syria. Though immigration has long been a controversial political issue in the United States, the protection of refugees has historically garnered bipartisan political support. How did we get here from there? (more…)
Blog post written by Tamara Wood (UNSW) and Dr Marina Sharpe (McGill) who will both present on the ‘Mass Displacement and Regional Protection Frameworks in Africa’ panel at the upcoming RLI 2nd Annual Conference. The full conference programme is available here.
The large-scale movement of persons is a defining feature of displacement in Africa. Conflict, generalised violence, persecution, political instability and the effects of natural hazards and climate change – whether alone or in combination – force large numbers of people from their homes each year. In the last decade, situations both protracted and new have forced massive numbers of people to move in countries such Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan. While a small number travel to Europe or beyond, most of those forced to flee seek safety within the region. (more…)
Blog post written by RLI Senior Research Associate Jean-François Durieux who will present on the ‘Mass Displacement and Regional Protection Frameworks in Africa’ panel, and chair the panels on ‘Shared Protection: Rethinking the Role of the State of Origin in International Refugee Protection’ and ‘Flight from Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Violence’ at the upcoming RLI 2nd Annual Conference. The full conference programme is available here.
A good six months after the adoption of the New York Declaration, the agencies in charge of drafting and promoting the Global Compacts on refugees and migrants – UNHCR and IOM, respectively – seem to be struggling to define the legal nature and the scope of these instruments. This makes it difficult for scholars and technical experts – whatever their discipline may be – to offer constructive suggestions. Here, as in all high-level political initiatives on ‘global’ issues – climate change springs to mind – there exists a serious risk of conceptual dispersion: international migration being a multi-dimensional phenomenon, there is almost no limit to the number of peripheral issues and vested interests capable of jumping, so to speak, on the bandwagon. (more…)