The long-term challenges of forced migration: Perspectives from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (original) (raw)
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Beijing Law Review
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This paper aims to analyse the international refugee protection regime and to revisit the principle of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ on behalf of refugees, with reference to one of the most dramatic crises of our times – the refugee crisis in the Middle East. The starting point of our analysis is an assumption that the international refugee protection regime, based on the 1951 International Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, does not provide an adequate response to the large-scale refugee influxes and does not guarantee a just burden-sharing to protect refugees. In this paper we argue for a decisive shift from the traditional refugee ‘protection’ regime to a more demanding and challenging ‘responsibility’ and ‘responsibility–sharing’ regime. The paper argues that this is the best way to raise commitment, awareness, and to demonstrate solidarity of the international community with both the refugees and host countries and communities in the Middle East, including Turkey and Lebanon where most of the Syrian refugees fled, Europe, and elsewhere. We consider and advocate the use of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) mechanism to protect refugees – the Responsibility to Protect Refugees (R2PR). The way this research is pursued combines elements of positive and normative analysis and a number of methods. It involves the analysis of primary sources - the texts of instruments regulating the situation of refugees, secondary sources, documentary analysis as well as comparative, contextual and historical analysis.
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This paper was written while I was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Migration Research Center Mirekoc and the Department of International Relations at Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey. I am grateful to the Director of the Center, Ahmed Icduygu, and the colleagues from the Center for their support. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 316796 The recent Syrian refugee crisis opened a debate on the under-theorized issue of migration law regarding the status and the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. According to UNHCR estimates, Turkey has, since the conflict in Syria begun, accommodated within its jurisdictional boundaries the most conspicuous number of refugees (around two million), but none of them have been recognized legally as refugees. Turkey, one of the signatory states of the 1951 Geneva Convention, still applies “geographical limitations”; that is, it does not grant refugee status to non-European to- be refugees, but rather extends to the latter a status of ‘temporary protection’. The paradox is that Turkey grants legal refugee status to European applicants (consider the very trivial number of applicants in need of refuge from Europe after 1951), whereas millions of non-European ‘proper’ refugees, including those currently in the country will not be granted refugee status. What can we learn philosophically from this law and practice? Most philosophers concur with granting refugees a fundamental human right, in line with the Kantian hospitality principle, to sojourn in other territories temporarily and also more permanently, including a lifetime. The principle is incorporated in the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, as the principle of “non-refoulement” (United Nations, 1951), obliging signatory states not to forcibly return refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin, if doing so would endanger their lives. Furthermore, asylum seekers’ and refugees’ claims to admission and more broadly to human rights protection are legally incorporated in the international human rights regime, and subsequently accepted by states (Benhabib, 2004). The fundamental human right to admission regards the admission of the asylee and refugee, and not that of immigrants whose admission remains “a privilege”, in the sense that it is up to the sovereign to grant such a “contract of beneficence” (Benhabib 2004). David Miller argues that when it comes to protecting human rights, states’ actions should reflect primarily the ‘terms’ of states, as they see fit: “your human right to food could at most impose on me an obligation to provide adequate food in the form that is most convenient to me (i.e. it costs me the least labour to produce), not an obligation to provide food in the form that you happen to prefer”; furthermore, states do not have a duty to automatically admit refugees, if for example, other similarly well off states can admit them, and the principle of non-refoulement is fulfilled (Miller, 2013). Miller rules out the theoretical possibility of human rights violations, in claiming that a state can deny entry to refugees, only if they are not returned to the country of origin and third countries where their human rights will be violated, and provided that some other state would take charge of them. Miller’s state-centrist view, assuming the point of view of states primarily, and second, wrongly assuming that the only theoretically salient feature is when refugees do not receive admission, as a result of which their human rights are violated, has pernicious implications. As an alternative, I argue that human rights are possible primarily when we view their defence as a primary moral concern, rather than instrumental and contingent upon what states see fit. I propose instead a philosophical view that genuinely assumes and acts upon the needs of refugees primarily, in both being admitted and rejected to sojourn in new territories. Very little effort has so far been expended by migration theorists to explain the character of a just distribution of refugees between states. Most studies instead have offered ample explanations regarding why refugees and migrants move to some states rather than others (Gibney, 2009). Since an adequate baseline from which to judge the justice of the distribution of refugees between states is still lacking, any new patterns of movement we might advocate creates possibilities for new unjust distribution patterns, a normative scrutiny that takes into consideration justice to refugees (besides justice between states) is of paramount importance. In this paper I analyse few of the main proposals of refugee distribution among states from a perspective of justice and argue in favour of the burden-sharing model that prioritizes justice to refugees. Specifically, I briefly analyse the “Syrian refugee crises” and I conceptualize it as an “engineered regionalism”, according to which the most conspicuous number of refugees end up seeking refuge in the region of their origin. In the second section, I explain why engineered regionalism is problematic from a justice perspective, and therefore explore alternatives we commonly think of in the literature as burden-sharing options. In the third section I argue that the respective alternatives are also morally unsatisfactory. They are all based on the presupposition that a right to free movement is what will entitle the refugee to (re)- settle to the country of one’s choosing, whereas this right is grounded on a philosophically informed principle of non-refoulement (as the ‘fire’ illustration proves). I attempt in the last section to propose a new model that is informed by the latter principle.
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Refugees, Conflict, and International Law
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Refugees, Conflict, and International Law, 2016
This research paper is the result of a collaboration between DPI and Al Marsad, an independent human rights organisation with a history of engagement with refugee issues, and with whom this research paper was co-written. The paper seeks to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the current refugee movement crisis with a specific focus on conflict resolution, examining both the likelihood of conflict occurring, and outlining avenues in which this may be addressed. The relevant international legal frameworks, academic understandings of the relationship between refugees and conflict, and past historical precedents are provided, along with a clear overview of the refugee situation in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, which draws directly from the testimonies of Syrian refugees themselves. In particular, this paper explores how the dual needs of securing security and the human rights of refugees can be met together.