Dr Nafees Ahmad | South Asian University, New Delhi (original) (raw)
Dr. Nafees Ahmad is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi. He holds a doctorate in International Refugee Law and Human Rights. His area of scholarship focuses on refugees, migrants, the role of artificial intelligence in refugee protection, international politics of asylum, migration, global forced displacement, global migration governance, and climate refugees in South Asia. He also addresses climate change-driven human displacement, refugee policy, invisible frames of asylum, disconnects of durable solutions and SAARC connects and contexts of refugee protection. He conceived and introduced a new Program in 2011 at the FLS-SAU called Comparative Constitutional Law of SAARC Nations for LLM along with international human rights and international refugee law. His publications include papers in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Human Rights and Law (Brill), Kings’ Student Law Review (King’s College London), Groningen Journal of International Law (University of Groningen-The Netherlands), Harvard International Law Journal ISIL Year Book on International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law, and ELCOP Year Book of Human Rights-Dhaka and NUJS International Journal of Legal Studies and Research (IJLSR), etc. Dr. Ahmad has co-authored a book on Climate Refugees in South Asia published by Springer https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811331367\. His book on International Refugee Law and Human Rights is in press. Dr. Ahmad is also an active blogger, writer, poet, and Op-Ed contributor to many international sites in the fields of forced migration, refugee research, human rights, international relations, diplomacy, etc. Dr. Ahmad has been a Resource Person and External Reviewer for the Ministry of Law, Government of India-sponsored Research Project on Judicial Reforms since June 2016 at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kashipur. Further, he has been a visiting professor at the Indian Society of International Law (ISIL), Jamia Milia Islamia-New Delhi, and Judicial Academies of various states of India for Sensitization Programmes on Justicing, Balancing Rules, and the Principles on Gender Justice in the Context of Personal Laws in India. He serves on many committees and editorial boards of many international journals and magazines. Dr. Ahmad has been serving since 2010 as Senior Visiting Faculty to World Learning (WL)-India under the India-Health and Human Rights Program organized by the World Learning, 1 Kipling Road, Brattleboro VT-05302, USA for Fall & Spring Semesters Batches of US Students by its School for International Training (SIT Study Abroad) in New Delhi-INDIA. Dr. Ahmad has also been addressing the Armed Forces establishments’ sensitization programs on international human rights law and international humanitarian law. He is available #24X7 at drnafeesahmad@sau.ac.in
Phone: +91 8130326250
Address: Dr. Nafees Ahmad
Ph.D. (International Refugee Law & Human Rights)
LL.M. (International Law & Human Rights)
LL.B. (H) [English Common Law]
B.A. (H) [Anglo-American English Literature]
224, II Floor, Akbar Bhawan, Faculty of Legal Studies,
South Asian University, Satya Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi-110021 INDIA
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1791-3060
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811331367
http://www.sau.int/faculty/faculty-profile.html?staff\_id=33
# +91 8130326250 (Work)
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Papers by Dr Nafees Ahmad
Climate Refugees in South Asia, 2018
The people are forced to move, migrate or leave their homelands due to climate change in South As... more The people are forced to move, migrate or leave their homelands due to climate change in South Asia. Justice necessitates that climate refugees must be provided and extended the same protection as is provided to the political refugees who have an array of rights and protections under the international refugee law superintended by the UNHCR that was created following the World War II. However, the national governments in South Asia have failed to address the climate change-induced migration in the region. In this conspectus, the present chapter explores, examines and assesses the role of the regional judiciary in protecting the climate refugees in the absence of a 'climate refugee-specific law' in the SAARC jurisdictions. The role of the judiciary in environmental governance and sustainable development has been recognized as one of most important features of South Asian jurisprudence. Thus, the instant chapter evaluates the judicial reception and responses to the refugee law and international climate change law in South Asia while making a case for Intra-South Asian Judicial Interactions on 'climate refugees'. The chapter explains how the judiciary has played a proactive role in identifying the international environmental law principles to environmental protections. It also tries to explore the evolution of climate change regional constitutionalism to provide the SAARC jurisdictions a compendium of law and policies where under people crossing international borders in the region due to environmental calamities recognized as refugees by concluding and adopting a regional mechanism to protect the climate refugees.
Groningen Journal of International Law, 2017
Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and stat... more Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and state. The state of nationality is an identity to enjoy a 'right to have rights'. Statelessness disrupts the enjoyment of all the rights which are generally perceived or purported to have been granted for all including inter alia the right to work, the right to vote, the right to health, the right to welfare benefits or welfare and a child's right to education. Statelessness precludes people from relocating and proliferates their chances of arbitrary arrest, confinement or detention with no adequate answers. Succinctly averring, statelessness demotes and generates a state of irrelevance among the people with no hope of their condition ever improving, no possibility for a better future for themselves or their posterity. The state of statelessness dismantles the idea of cohesive human existence in a civilized world. Therefore, statelessness is a deprivation of a range of rights and benefits that bestow upon individuals constitutional identity, national security and state protection popularly known as nationality or citizenship. Statelessness may be imputed to a catena of causes inter-alia administrative practices, conflict of laws, discrimination, denationalization, matrimonial litigation, non-registration of births, persecution, renunciation, transfer of territories, re-demarcation of new boundaries, state succession, terrorism, climate change and forced displacement and migration. But its magnitude and scale still remains to be mapped because the problem of statelessness is a new predicament for international law and its offshoots. It has emerged as an ordeal for the international community that has to attend to the plight of 10 million stateless persons worldwide. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) mandate is well founded in light of the sheer amount of stateless persons. Furthermore, there are also at least 1.5 million stateless refugees and around 3.5 million stateless refugees from Palestinian origin whose problems have posed challenges to the international law framework. In this paper, an attempt has been made to decipher the miasma of statelessness while locating the right to nationality of stateless persons. Suggestions are made with respect to how to end and ensure the reduction of statelessness under the architecture of international law within and beyond the pragmatism of international relations, diplomatic narratives and orientations engrossed in Occidentalism and orientalism.
BRILL, 2021
Artificial intelligence (ai) has created algorithmic-driven humanitarianism without ethics, justi... more Artificial intelligence (ai) has created algorithmic-driven humanitarianism without ethics, justice, and morality. Current ai dynamics do not protect humanity and mitigate its sufferings in refugee status determination procedures and immigration decisions, raising a host of data privacy and confidentiality issues. Data from refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants and the stateless might be deployed and manipulated for geostrategic, geopolitical, geo-engineering, medico-research, socioeconomic , and demographical purposes by international organisations and governments. ai lacks anthropogenic sensitivity, critical thinking, and human traits of subjectivity and objectivity. The author ruminates on these issues by examining the application of ai and assessing its impact on the global human rights norms. The author adopts a human rights-based approach while espousing the reprogramming of algorithmic humanitarianism within new ai technologies for sustainable artificial intelligence. Keywords algorithmic humanitarianism-sustainable artificial intelligence-refugee status determination (rsd) procedures and refugee protection frames-human dignity and artificial intelligence (ai) governance-immigration decisions and digital authoritarianism-human rights norms-human diversity-digital equality
Governments worldwide usually defend that there exists a right to derogate from human rights obli... more Governments worldwide usually defend that there exists a right to derogate from human rights obligations to protect the public interest during public health crises. The COVID-19 has bestowed upon States an unprecedented opportunity to impose state emergency measures to combat pandemics in the name of protecting public health. Such emergency measures have affected several human rights and fundamental freedoms enunciated in the international human rights law (IHRL) framework.
NUJS International Journal of Legal Studies and Research (IJLSR) , 2018
The idea of environmental governance stipulates a compendium of ethics and morals that have been ... more The idea of environmental governance stipulates a compendium of ethics and morals that have been getting illumination of their radiance from the civil society wedded with ecological accountability, governmental transparency, democratic institutionalism, the rule of law and environmental justice to We, the People of India. The environmental governance of a system based on participation, accountability, and equity ensures the broad political social and economic issues of the marginalized sections of the society. There is a growing emphasis on governance as a critical aspect of environmental protection which calls for active and vibrant participation of civil society. There is a dire need to tailor the discussion and knowledge around these themes with a thrust on streamlining the functional role of the civil society organizations in the context of the environmental governance regime. It primarily cajoles to underscore the need for proper government civil society relations; paradoxically, while the role of civil society has been increasingly becoming the raison d’ etre of environmental governance, there are also increased contestations about the implementation of environmental governance standards across jurisdictions. Hence, there is an emergent need for a serious deliberation on this subject as these assident norms of environmental governance express a resolve to have a charter of human rights to sustain human existence to eke out a livelihood with dignity while bringing the socio-economic progress within the orbit of environmental justice. There is a looming desideratum of challenges like the implementation of environmental policies and integration of socio-environmental concerns into sustainable development framework in
addressing the gender, human rights and the rule of law dimensions in
environmental governance. Thus, the role of the civil society in
strengthening environmental governance, fostering human rights and
contributing in sensitizing people, disseminating about the environment, and maintaining ecosystems in India has become more critical than ever before. This paper deals with the role played by the civil society organizations in the post-colonial context in the area of environmental governance and justice.
The refugees are on the tassels of municipal and international legal systems since the adoption o... more The refugees are on the tassels of municipal and international legal
systems since the adoption of an international legal framework secured as the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (UNCSR) that has been developed to provide refugees some protection which is now debated to address all their grievances including the refugee status determination (RSD) in every nook and corner of the world. RSD is the process whereunder states and UNHCR determine who are entitled to have the benefits of refugee protection. The RSD process facilitates the accomplishment of their global human rights obligations to the beneficiaries under the international refugee protection regime. It is a platitude of international refugee law (IRL) that RSD does not bestow status on a refugee but merely validates it. In performing the RSD obligations, it is the treatment that is meted out to refugees and outsiders in our midst within the UNCSR refugee definition. The instant research paper addresses the issues of critical spaces in the RSD system based on the grounds envisaged in the refugee definition that poses challenges, risks, and responses for a cosmopolitan purpose. There is also a sovereignty narrative that has made the human rights subservient and the menace of persecution is being ignored within the synthesis of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Refugee Law (IRL). However, there is also a pressing question of a legal framework for the protection of refugees frontier justice for them globally that address every aspect of the refugee problem from registration and determination of status, to repatriation, resettlement and legal and political protection reassessment, interpretation, responses, risks, and challenges worldwide.
The protection of Internally Displaced Persons - popularly called IDPs - has come to dominate the... more The protection of Internally Displaced Persons - popularly called IDPs - has come to dominate the contemporary debate in International Law, International Refugee Law (IRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). But these fields of law have offered disappointing levels of protection. There are no protection provisions in IRL, IHRL and IHL dealing with IDPs and protection is limited to only those persons who cross international borders. But there is another legal framework called the UNHCR Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998 which were prepared for the UN Commission on Human Rights that provides protection and assistance to the IDPs. Internal displacement rose to prominence as an issue through the late 1980s and became an important priority in global affairs during the 1990s. Today, human displacement trends in homeland boundaries have acquired global concerns and ramifications and need aid and assistance at par refugees. IDPs have also been living in refugee-like situations that make them eligible for international protection in their country of residence. Thus, it is evident from the IDPs definition discussed hereunder that it does imply to have an idea of international protection for them but it also endures insufficiencies. However, IDPs is an international problem now and creates with international obligations. Additionally, the IDPs framework is not a legally enforceable mechanism and its operation and implementation exclusively depends upon national governments. The IDPs definition is extremely restricted and lacks international application and flagrantly deprives them of international protection. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this paper to analyse the existing IDP laws, to identify the IDPs protection gaps, challenges and their implementation in practice worldwide including India.
Gender Justice in India: From Substantive Syntactics to Progressive Pragmatics
The idea of gender justice is the substantive recognition of equality in its ethical syntactics, ... more The idea of gender justice is the substantive recognition of equality in its ethical syntactics, but it remains in a vacuum unless and until it is manifested in pragmatics in the lives of the women and girls. The gender justice is the target to achieve full equality with equity among women and girls and men and boys in all spheres of human development. The gender justice is the result of men and women jointly defining and shaping the policies and structures on the anvil of equality in the civil society. The gender justice confronts the discrimination against women and girls that have been affecting the lives of women since time immemorial and is the most widespread and acute human rights violations. Discrimination prevents women and girls from accomplishing their socio-political, eco-cultural and lego-institutional objectives ordained in all regions, all constitutions and based on the ordinary prudence of equity, equality and a clear conscience. The gender justice makes available to women equal rights with men in all spheres of human life including matrimonial relationships that has been an institution of gender abuse, women subjugation, and women exploitation to the hilt among the Muslim community in India. However, other religious communities in India also have the privilege to demean their wives in different departments of life but Muslims in the name of Islam have denied and deprived Muslim women from their lawful claims, entitlements, and rights provided in the Holy Quran particularly their rights in conjugal causes by limiting their ability to access Quranic model of dissolution of Muslim marriage that invokes religious syntactics in interpreting their rights.
The global nuclear justice quest has been culminated by adopting a new regime that intends to dil... more The global nuclear justice quest has been culminated by adopting a new regime that intends to dilute the Westphalian Exceptionalism and tries to establish the Universal Constitutionalism based on UN Charter's goal of violence free world enunciated in its preamble. But its plausibility and pragmatism would be tested in the years ahead. The United Nations has voted to approve the text of a proposed draft for an international treaty on the Banning and Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons on July 07, 2017. The Draft Treaty is called Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT) that shall formally be opened for signature in September 2017, and shall be binding as an international legal instrument provided it receives 50 th country's instrument of ratification that is duly deposited with the UN Secretary-General within 90 days of its opening as per the provisions of the impugned treaty. Unbelievably, the ensuing ratification of the treaty has consumed 73 years since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to arrive at an international understanding for the nuclear arms free world. Under the auspices of the UN, the international community has made the use or threat of nuclear weapons prohibited unconditionally under Article 1 (e) of the framework of the multilateral treaty. Remarkably, state parties to the treaty have to bear the core and absolute obligation enunciated under Article 1 (a) of the Draft Treaty that is " prohibition of any possession, deployment, testing, transfer, storage and production " of the nuclear weapons and any connection whatsoever therewith or thereto or otherwise. The NBT is an unprecedented step beyond the rubrics of prohibition that must be interpreted by dismantling the geopolitical Doctrine of Nuclearism (DoN), and its proliferation and retention must not be content as an absolute necessity by the few international geopolitical entities. The positive resurgence of NBT has recalibrated an international impetuosity to untangle the murky clouds of geostrategic justifications of nuclear status quo which have rubbished the DoN and anti-nuclear perceptions of the many national governments. However, past assertions regarding the nuclear disarmament lack convictions of the nuclear states of US,
Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and stat... more Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and state. The state of nationality is an identity to enjoy a 'right to have rights'. Statelessness disrupts the enjoyment of all the rights which are generally perceived or purported to have been granted for all including inter alia the right to work, the right to vote, the right to health, the right to welfare benefits or welfare and a child's right to education. Statelessness precludes people from relocating and proliferates their chances of arbitrary arrest, confinement or detention with no adequate answers. Succinctly averring, statelessness demotes and generates a state of irrelevance among the people with no hope of their condition ever improving, no possibility for a better future for themselves or their posterity. The state of statelessness dismantles the idea of cohesive human existence in a civilized world. Therefore, statelessness is a deprivation of a range of rights and benefits that bestow upon individuals constitutional identity, national security and state protection popularly known as nationality or citizenship. Statelessness may be imputed to a catena of causes inter-alia administrative practices, conflict of laws, discrimination, denationalization, matrimonial litigation, non-registration of births, persecution, renunciation, transfer of territories, re-demarcation of new boundaries, state succession, terrorism, climate change and forced displacement and migration. But its magnitude and scale still remains to be mapped because the problem of statelessness is a new predicament for international law and its offshoots. It has emerged as an ordeal for the international community that has to attend to the plight of 10 million stateless persons worldwide. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) mandate is well founded in light of the sheer amount of stateless persons. Furthermore, there are also at least 1.5 million stateless refugees and around 3.5 million stateless refugees from Palestinian origin whose problems have posed challenges to the international law framework. In this paper, an attempt has been made to decipher the miasma of statelessness while locating the right to nationality of stateless persons. Suggestions are made with respect to how to end and ensure the reduction of statelessness under the architecture of international law within and beyond the pragmatism of international relations, diplomatic narratives and orientations engrossed in Occidentalism and orientalism. *
Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, 2009
... Dr. Nafees Ahmad (b.1970 ... Dr. Ahmad has done his Ph.D. (2006) in International Refugee Law... more ... Dr. Nafees Ahmad (b.1970 ... Dr. Ahmad has done his Ph.D. (2006) in International Refugee Law& Human Rights. Dr. Ahmad is a poet, orator, short-story writer and established his academic credentials, participatory pursuits and legal scholarship in and around the class. ...
The economic engagements in a Globalizing South Asia and its impact on new trade avenues can no l... more The economic engagements in a Globalizing South Asia and its impact on new trade avenues can no longer be stratified and sanctified by regionalism, nationalism or localism. Rather; an analysis of the security environment of a particular area must address the global ramifications and repercussions that may have an overt or covert impact on the specific area of territorial integrity of a country including India. The new economic engagements should not be a catalyst to decimate regional alliances like SAARC and its economic activities under SAFTA that requires being re-calibrated to be in tune with the new economic realities of this region. At the same time, socio-political sagacity has doubled the expectations of the people across the globe, and at the same mounted tremendous pressure upon states and the societies. The territorial integrity scenario after 9/11 has emplaced a new definition of national security that is impregnated with the US orientation and may not be standard for all nation–states, while posing a dichotomy that in an inter–dependent world territorial integrity cannot be ensured contrary to the principle of sovereign equality.
We, the Nations of the World, got wedded with the climate contumacy of the US that has, ultimatel... more We, the Nations of the World, got wedded with the climate contumacy of the US that has, ultimately, decimated the dreams and desires and had meted out the global grief to the humanity. In 2015, at Paris---a city known for its pleasures---a utopia was created only to be destroyed later. The Paris Agreement has been regarded as the biggest step ever collectively accomplished by the global community to alleviate the catastrophic impact of climate change on the only planet blessed with essentials of sustainable human existence and survival. However, the history is replete with the instances of US recalcitrant behaviour in international commitments in the areas of preserving environmental ecology and human rights teleology. In this context, America cannot be great again on the decimation of lives of the people of 194 countries of the world in its quest for a Pyrrhic economic growth.
The contemporary world is fraught with trends directed at the criminalization of international mi... more The contemporary world is fraught with trends directed at the criminalization of international migration (CoM). The modus operandi of migration management is replete with the flagrant violation of international refugee law (IRL) principles like non-refoulement that does not allow any person to be sent back to the territories inimical to his/her life, liberty and security.
CoM has pandered to many human catastrophes sans accomplishing the fundamental principles of IRL. It is, indeed, a well-established fact of international law that states are legitimate in controlling, securing and administrating their national borders while refusing the entry of people or individuals arriving from foreign lands. However, there are international instruments, agreements, and understandings where under rights of migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers are protected on a binding basis. These international arrangements envisage non-discriminatory and rights-based procedures to seek asylum in another country. But, unfortunately, some migrants cannot claim refugee status even if they are involuntarily repatriated, deported or expelled to their homelands of persecution and economic calamities. On many occasions, a number of migrants live in the country of refuge for a long time and secretly earn their livelihood in the host countries. These migrants have their children in schools but they could not get themselves regularized in the host country and destined to live under clandestine conditions with the fear of being apprehended and deported by the law enforcement agencies.
The grammar of regionalization of equitable development demands a continuum of cooperation and co... more The grammar of regionalization of equitable development demands a continuum of cooperation and co-existence that subsumes the horizontal hiatus and vertical vagaries of geo-strategic and lego-political nature which establish peace, progress and prosperity in this part of the world. The most important challenge for SAARC lies in moving from the gamut of ideas to the executable roadmap in realizing the vision of the grouping while maintaining an unprecedented regional momentum in commensurate with the changing scenario. This regional momentum must be spontaneous spurt paving the way of the peoples to be capable enough to harness the full potential of the South Asian region and to join the worldwide quest for economic growth and optimum development. However, SAARC should clinch its own rightful place among the comity of nations with its South Asian-ness and regional consciousness approach that aspires to emulate the national standards, accountability, transparency-oriented policies reflected in the collectivity of state action.
The history of European internationalism and European integration elucidate the idea of human rig... more The history of European internationalism and European integration elucidate the idea of human rights and their ethical foundations in the post-World-War-II scenario. The Christian idea of contemporary European identity is grounded on the revolutionizing undertakings of technocrats like Jean Monnet whereas conservatives like Winston Churchill justified their idea of human rights protection in an archaic approbation of European civilization. Therefore, the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) takes into account all high lines of rights advocacy to pursue an agenda at home and abroad wedded with accommodating and assimilating people of all hue and cries. It was established in the recent elections in the Netherlands and France that all Europeans populations do not hanker for old-fashioned or far-right nationalism that encapsulates narcissism and nihilism. In fact, these elections have confirmed the idea that politics of polarization on religious revanchism, political paranoid, and xenophobia is a dangerous premise that has boomeranged at the hustings in the both countries.
The refugee crisis exploded on the global landscape in 2015 cautioning the comity of nations that... more The refugee crisis exploded on the global landscape in 2015 cautioning the comity of nations that refugees are not socio-political resources. The year 2016 corroborated that the refugee crisis is not going to be a vanishing point of human existentialism. It also made available an opportunity to address the plight of flight of refugees in 2017. It is now incumbent upon the comity of nations in 2017 to have an agenda of legal and ethical ramifications to motivate the refugees to promote transformation in their country of origin as the fourth sustainable solution in tune with three durable solutions.
Climate Refugees in South Asia, 2018
The people are forced to move, migrate or leave their homelands due to climate change in South As... more The people are forced to move, migrate or leave their homelands due to climate change in South Asia. Justice necessitates that climate refugees must be provided and extended the same protection as is provided to the political refugees who have an array of rights and protections under the international refugee law superintended by the UNHCR that was created following the World War II. However, the national governments in South Asia have failed to address the climate change-induced migration in the region. In this conspectus, the present chapter explores, examines and assesses the role of the regional judiciary in protecting the climate refugees in the absence of a 'climate refugee-specific law' in the SAARC jurisdictions. The role of the judiciary in environmental governance and sustainable development has been recognized as one of most important features of South Asian jurisprudence. Thus, the instant chapter evaluates the judicial reception and responses to the refugee law and international climate change law in South Asia while making a case for Intra-South Asian Judicial Interactions on 'climate refugees'. The chapter explains how the judiciary has played a proactive role in identifying the international environmental law principles to environmental protections. It also tries to explore the evolution of climate change regional constitutionalism to provide the SAARC jurisdictions a compendium of law and policies where under people crossing international borders in the region due to environmental calamities recognized as refugees by concluding and adopting a regional mechanism to protect the climate refugees.
Groningen Journal of International Law, 2017
Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and stat... more Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and state. The state of nationality is an identity to enjoy a 'right to have rights'. Statelessness disrupts the enjoyment of all the rights which are generally perceived or purported to have been granted for all including inter alia the right to work, the right to vote, the right to health, the right to welfare benefits or welfare and a child's right to education. Statelessness precludes people from relocating and proliferates their chances of arbitrary arrest, confinement or detention with no adequate answers. Succinctly averring, statelessness demotes and generates a state of irrelevance among the people with no hope of their condition ever improving, no possibility for a better future for themselves or their posterity. The state of statelessness dismantles the idea of cohesive human existence in a civilized world. Therefore, statelessness is a deprivation of a range of rights and benefits that bestow upon individuals constitutional identity, national security and state protection popularly known as nationality or citizenship. Statelessness may be imputed to a catena of causes inter-alia administrative practices, conflict of laws, discrimination, denationalization, matrimonial litigation, non-registration of births, persecution, renunciation, transfer of territories, re-demarcation of new boundaries, state succession, terrorism, climate change and forced displacement and migration. But its magnitude and scale still remains to be mapped because the problem of statelessness is a new predicament for international law and its offshoots. It has emerged as an ordeal for the international community that has to attend to the plight of 10 million stateless persons worldwide. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) mandate is well founded in light of the sheer amount of stateless persons. Furthermore, there are also at least 1.5 million stateless refugees and around 3.5 million stateless refugees from Palestinian origin whose problems have posed challenges to the international law framework. In this paper, an attempt has been made to decipher the miasma of statelessness while locating the right to nationality of stateless persons. Suggestions are made with respect to how to end and ensure the reduction of statelessness under the architecture of international law within and beyond the pragmatism of international relations, diplomatic narratives and orientations engrossed in Occidentalism and orientalism.
BRILL, 2021
Artificial intelligence (ai) has created algorithmic-driven humanitarianism without ethics, justi... more Artificial intelligence (ai) has created algorithmic-driven humanitarianism without ethics, justice, and morality. Current ai dynamics do not protect humanity and mitigate its sufferings in refugee status determination procedures and immigration decisions, raising a host of data privacy and confidentiality issues. Data from refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants and the stateless might be deployed and manipulated for geostrategic, geopolitical, geo-engineering, medico-research, socioeconomic , and demographical purposes by international organisations and governments. ai lacks anthropogenic sensitivity, critical thinking, and human traits of subjectivity and objectivity. The author ruminates on these issues by examining the application of ai and assessing its impact on the global human rights norms. The author adopts a human rights-based approach while espousing the reprogramming of algorithmic humanitarianism within new ai technologies for sustainable artificial intelligence. Keywords algorithmic humanitarianism-sustainable artificial intelligence-refugee status determination (rsd) procedures and refugee protection frames-human dignity and artificial intelligence (ai) governance-immigration decisions and digital authoritarianism-human rights norms-human diversity-digital equality
Governments worldwide usually defend that there exists a right to derogate from human rights obli... more Governments worldwide usually defend that there exists a right to derogate from human rights obligations to protect the public interest during public health crises. The COVID-19 has bestowed upon States an unprecedented opportunity to impose state emergency measures to combat pandemics in the name of protecting public health. Such emergency measures have affected several human rights and fundamental freedoms enunciated in the international human rights law (IHRL) framework.
NUJS International Journal of Legal Studies and Research (IJLSR) , 2018
The idea of environmental governance stipulates a compendium of ethics and morals that have been ... more The idea of environmental governance stipulates a compendium of ethics and morals that have been getting illumination of their radiance from the civil society wedded with ecological accountability, governmental transparency, democratic institutionalism, the rule of law and environmental justice to We, the People of India. The environmental governance of a system based on participation, accountability, and equity ensures the broad political social and economic issues of the marginalized sections of the society. There is a growing emphasis on governance as a critical aspect of environmental protection which calls for active and vibrant participation of civil society. There is a dire need to tailor the discussion and knowledge around these themes with a thrust on streamlining the functional role of the civil society organizations in the context of the environmental governance regime. It primarily cajoles to underscore the need for proper government civil society relations; paradoxically, while the role of civil society has been increasingly becoming the raison d’ etre of environmental governance, there are also increased contestations about the implementation of environmental governance standards across jurisdictions. Hence, there is an emergent need for a serious deliberation on this subject as these assident norms of environmental governance express a resolve to have a charter of human rights to sustain human existence to eke out a livelihood with dignity while bringing the socio-economic progress within the orbit of environmental justice. There is a looming desideratum of challenges like the implementation of environmental policies and integration of socio-environmental concerns into sustainable development framework in
addressing the gender, human rights and the rule of law dimensions in
environmental governance. Thus, the role of the civil society in
strengthening environmental governance, fostering human rights and
contributing in sensitizing people, disseminating about the environment, and maintaining ecosystems in India has become more critical than ever before. This paper deals with the role played by the civil society organizations in the post-colonial context in the area of environmental governance and justice.
The refugees are on the tassels of municipal and international legal systems since the adoption o... more The refugees are on the tassels of municipal and international legal
systems since the adoption of an international legal framework secured as the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (UNCSR) that has been developed to provide refugees some protection which is now debated to address all their grievances including the refugee status determination (RSD) in every nook and corner of the world. RSD is the process whereunder states and UNHCR determine who are entitled to have the benefits of refugee protection. The RSD process facilitates the accomplishment of their global human rights obligations to the beneficiaries under the international refugee protection regime. It is a platitude of international refugee law (IRL) that RSD does not bestow status on a refugee but merely validates it. In performing the RSD obligations, it is the treatment that is meted out to refugees and outsiders in our midst within the UNCSR refugee definition. The instant research paper addresses the issues of critical spaces in the RSD system based on the grounds envisaged in the refugee definition that poses challenges, risks, and responses for a cosmopolitan purpose. There is also a sovereignty narrative that has made the human rights subservient and the menace of persecution is being ignored within the synthesis of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Refugee Law (IRL). However, there is also a pressing question of a legal framework for the protection of refugees frontier justice for them globally that address every aspect of the refugee problem from registration and determination of status, to repatriation, resettlement and legal and political protection reassessment, interpretation, responses, risks, and challenges worldwide.
The protection of Internally Displaced Persons - popularly called IDPs - has come to dominate the... more The protection of Internally Displaced Persons - popularly called IDPs - has come to dominate the contemporary debate in International Law, International Refugee Law (IRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). But these fields of law have offered disappointing levels of protection. There are no protection provisions in IRL, IHRL and IHL dealing with IDPs and protection is limited to only those persons who cross international borders. But there is another legal framework called the UNHCR Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998 which were prepared for the UN Commission on Human Rights that provides protection and assistance to the IDPs. Internal displacement rose to prominence as an issue through the late 1980s and became an important priority in global affairs during the 1990s. Today, human displacement trends in homeland boundaries have acquired global concerns and ramifications and need aid and assistance at par refugees. IDPs have also been living in refugee-like situations that make them eligible for international protection in their country of residence. Thus, it is evident from the IDPs definition discussed hereunder that it does imply to have an idea of international protection for them but it also endures insufficiencies. However, IDPs is an international problem now and creates with international obligations. Additionally, the IDPs framework is not a legally enforceable mechanism and its operation and implementation exclusively depends upon national governments. The IDPs definition is extremely restricted and lacks international application and flagrantly deprives them of international protection. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this paper to analyse the existing IDP laws, to identify the IDPs protection gaps, challenges and their implementation in practice worldwide including India.
Gender Justice in India: From Substantive Syntactics to Progressive Pragmatics
The idea of gender justice is the substantive recognition of equality in its ethical syntactics, ... more The idea of gender justice is the substantive recognition of equality in its ethical syntactics, but it remains in a vacuum unless and until it is manifested in pragmatics in the lives of the women and girls. The gender justice is the target to achieve full equality with equity among women and girls and men and boys in all spheres of human development. The gender justice is the result of men and women jointly defining and shaping the policies and structures on the anvil of equality in the civil society. The gender justice confronts the discrimination against women and girls that have been affecting the lives of women since time immemorial and is the most widespread and acute human rights violations. Discrimination prevents women and girls from accomplishing their socio-political, eco-cultural and lego-institutional objectives ordained in all regions, all constitutions and based on the ordinary prudence of equity, equality and a clear conscience. The gender justice makes available to women equal rights with men in all spheres of human life including matrimonial relationships that has been an institution of gender abuse, women subjugation, and women exploitation to the hilt among the Muslim community in India. However, other religious communities in India also have the privilege to demean their wives in different departments of life but Muslims in the name of Islam have denied and deprived Muslim women from their lawful claims, entitlements, and rights provided in the Holy Quran particularly their rights in conjugal causes by limiting their ability to access Quranic model of dissolution of Muslim marriage that invokes religious syntactics in interpreting their rights.
The global nuclear justice quest has been culminated by adopting a new regime that intends to dil... more The global nuclear justice quest has been culminated by adopting a new regime that intends to dilute the Westphalian Exceptionalism and tries to establish the Universal Constitutionalism based on UN Charter's goal of violence free world enunciated in its preamble. But its plausibility and pragmatism would be tested in the years ahead. The United Nations has voted to approve the text of a proposed draft for an international treaty on the Banning and Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons on July 07, 2017. The Draft Treaty is called Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT) that shall formally be opened for signature in September 2017, and shall be binding as an international legal instrument provided it receives 50 th country's instrument of ratification that is duly deposited with the UN Secretary-General within 90 days of its opening as per the provisions of the impugned treaty. Unbelievably, the ensuing ratification of the treaty has consumed 73 years since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to arrive at an international understanding for the nuclear arms free world. Under the auspices of the UN, the international community has made the use or threat of nuclear weapons prohibited unconditionally under Article 1 (e) of the framework of the multilateral treaty. Remarkably, state parties to the treaty have to bear the core and absolute obligation enunciated under Article 1 (a) of the Draft Treaty that is " prohibition of any possession, deployment, testing, transfer, storage and production " of the nuclear weapons and any connection whatsoever therewith or thereto or otherwise. The NBT is an unprecedented step beyond the rubrics of prohibition that must be interpreted by dismantling the geopolitical Doctrine of Nuclearism (DoN), and its proliferation and retention must not be content as an absolute necessity by the few international geopolitical entities. The positive resurgence of NBT has recalibrated an international impetuosity to untangle the murky clouds of geostrategic justifications of nuclear status quo which have rubbished the DoN and anti-nuclear perceptions of the many national governments. However, past assertions regarding the nuclear disarmament lack convictions of the nuclear states of US,
Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and stat... more Statelessness is the absence of the right to have a legal connection between nationality and state. The state of nationality is an identity to enjoy a 'right to have rights'. Statelessness disrupts the enjoyment of all the rights which are generally perceived or purported to have been granted for all including inter alia the right to work, the right to vote, the right to health, the right to welfare benefits or welfare and a child's right to education. Statelessness precludes people from relocating and proliferates their chances of arbitrary arrest, confinement or detention with no adequate answers. Succinctly averring, statelessness demotes and generates a state of irrelevance among the people with no hope of their condition ever improving, no possibility for a better future for themselves or their posterity. The state of statelessness dismantles the idea of cohesive human existence in a civilized world. Therefore, statelessness is a deprivation of a range of rights and benefits that bestow upon individuals constitutional identity, national security and state protection popularly known as nationality or citizenship. Statelessness may be imputed to a catena of causes inter-alia administrative practices, conflict of laws, discrimination, denationalization, matrimonial litigation, non-registration of births, persecution, renunciation, transfer of territories, re-demarcation of new boundaries, state succession, terrorism, climate change and forced displacement and migration. But its magnitude and scale still remains to be mapped because the problem of statelessness is a new predicament for international law and its offshoots. It has emerged as an ordeal for the international community that has to attend to the plight of 10 million stateless persons worldwide. Thus, it is abundantly clear that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) mandate is well founded in light of the sheer amount of stateless persons. Furthermore, there are also at least 1.5 million stateless refugees and around 3.5 million stateless refugees from Palestinian origin whose problems have posed challenges to the international law framework. In this paper, an attempt has been made to decipher the miasma of statelessness while locating the right to nationality of stateless persons. Suggestions are made with respect to how to end and ensure the reduction of statelessness under the architecture of international law within and beyond the pragmatism of international relations, diplomatic narratives and orientations engrossed in Occidentalism and orientalism. *
Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, 2009
... Dr. Nafees Ahmad (b.1970 ... Dr. Ahmad has done his Ph.D. (2006) in International Refugee Law... more ... Dr. Nafees Ahmad (b.1970 ... Dr. Ahmad has done his Ph.D. (2006) in International Refugee Law& Human Rights. Dr. Ahmad is a poet, orator, short-story writer and established his academic credentials, participatory pursuits and legal scholarship in and around the class. ...
The economic engagements in a Globalizing South Asia and its impact on new trade avenues can no l... more The economic engagements in a Globalizing South Asia and its impact on new trade avenues can no longer be stratified and sanctified by regionalism, nationalism or localism. Rather; an analysis of the security environment of a particular area must address the global ramifications and repercussions that may have an overt or covert impact on the specific area of territorial integrity of a country including India. The new economic engagements should not be a catalyst to decimate regional alliances like SAARC and its economic activities under SAFTA that requires being re-calibrated to be in tune with the new economic realities of this region. At the same time, socio-political sagacity has doubled the expectations of the people across the globe, and at the same mounted tremendous pressure upon states and the societies. The territorial integrity scenario after 9/11 has emplaced a new definition of national security that is impregnated with the US orientation and may not be standard for all nation–states, while posing a dichotomy that in an inter–dependent world territorial integrity cannot be ensured contrary to the principle of sovereign equality.
We, the Nations of the World, got wedded with the climate contumacy of the US that has, ultimatel... more We, the Nations of the World, got wedded with the climate contumacy of the US that has, ultimately, decimated the dreams and desires and had meted out the global grief to the humanity. In 2015, at Paris---a city known for its pleasures---a utopia was created only to be destroyed later. The Paris Agreement has been regarded as the biggest step ever collectively accomplished by the global community to alleviate the catastrophic impact of climate change on the only planet blessed with essentials of sustainable human existence and survival. However, the history is replete with the instances of US recalcitrant behaviour in international commitments in the areas of preserving environmental ecology and human rights teleology. In this context, America cannot be great again on the decimation of lives of the people of 194 countries of the world in its quest for a Pyrrhic economic growth.
The contemporary world is fraught with trends directed at the criminalization of international mi... more The contemporary world is fraught with trends directed at the criminalization of international migration (CoM). The modus operandi of migration management is replete with the flagrant violation of international refugee law (IRL) principles like non-refoulement that does not allow any person to be sent back to the territories inimical to his/her life, liberty and security.
CoM has pandered to many human catastrophes sans accomplishing the fundamental principles of IRL. It is, indeed, a well-established fact of international law that states are legitimate in controlling, securing and administrating their national borders while refusing the entry of people or individuals arriving from foreign lands. However, there are international instruments, agreements, and understandings where under rights of migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers are protected on a binding basis. These international arrangements envisage non-discriminatory and rights-based procedures to seek asylum in another country. But, unfortunately, some migrants cannot claim refugee status even if they are involuntarily repatriated, deported or expelled to their homelands of persecution and economic calamities. On many occasions, a number of migrants live in the country of refuge for a long time and secretly earn their livelihood in the host countries. These migrants have their children in schools but they could not get themselves regularized in the host country and destined to live under clandestine conditions with the fear of being apprehended and deported by the law enforcement agencies.
The grammar of regionalization of equitable development demands a continuum of cooperation and co... more The grammar of regionalization of equitable development demands a continuum of cooperation and co-existence that subsumes the horizontal hiatus and vertical vagaries of geo-strategic and lego-political nature which establish peace, progress and prosperity in this part of the world. The most important challenge for SAARC lies in moving from the gamut of ideas to the executable roadmap in realizing the vision of the grouping while maintaining an unprecedented regional momentum in commensurate with the changing scenario. This regional momentum must be spontaneous spurt paving the way of the peoples to be capable enough to harness the full potential of the South Asian region and to join the worldwide quest for economic growth and optimum development. However, SAARC should clinch its own rightful place among the comity of nations with its South Asian-ness and regional consciousness approach that aspires to emulate the national standards, accountability, transparency-oriented policies reflected in the collectivity of state action.
The history of European internationalism and European integration elucidate the idea of human rig... more The history of European internationalism and European integration elucidate the idea of human rights and their ethical foundations in the post-World-War-II scenario. The Christian idea of contemporary European identity is grounded on the revolutionizing undertakings of technocrats like Jean Monnet whereas conservatives like Winston Churchill justified their idea of human rights protection in an archaic approbation of European civilization. Therefore, the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) takes into account all high lines of rights advocacy to pursue an agenda at home and abroad wedded with accommodating and assimilating people of all hue and cries. It was established in the recent elections in the Netherlands and France that all Europeans populations do not hanker for old-fashioned or far-right nationalism that encapsulates narcissism and nihilism. In fact, these elections have confirmed the idea that politics of polarization on religious revanchism, political paranoid, and xenophobia is a dangerous premise that has boomeranged at the hustings in the both countries.
The refugee crisis exploded on the global landscape in 2015 cautioning the comity of nations that... more The refugee crisis exploded on the global landscape in 2015 cautioning the comity of nations that refugees are not socio-political resources. The year 2016 corroborated that the refugee crisis is not going to be a vanishing point of human existentialism. It also made available an opportunity to address the plight of flight of refugees in 2017. It is now incumbent upon the comity of nations in 2017 to have an agenda of legal and ethical ramifications to motivate the refugees to promote transformation in their country of origin as the fourth sustainable solution in tune with three durable solutions.
