UNHCR Policy and Practice: Confronting Calls for Change (original) (raw)
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UNHCR'S SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN REFUGEE PROTECTION
The reality is that UNHCR has to work with inconsistent and inadequate funding from States that lack the political will and contravene the principles of the convention and statute. There is the other question: is the 1951 understanding of refugee protection still attainable today? Cold war politics meant that protection was granted easily to refugees from enemy States and hence making UNHCR’s work easier, although the circumstances are different today. Yes, it may be true that UNHCR has abandoned some of its main principles but it is also important to remember the context of how this has happened.
The Beleaguered Gatekeeper: Protection Challenges Posed by UNHCR Refugee Status Determination
International Journal of Refugee Law, 2006
The number of individual RSD applications received by UNHCR offices worldwide nearly doubled from 1997 to 2001, while UNHCR's RSD operations have been criticized for failing to implement basic standards of procedural fairness. Yet, although there is some literature critiquing how UNHCR determines refugee status, there is little literature examining whether UNHCR should do so, and if it should, when, where, and under what conditions. UNHCR performance of RSD poses protection challenges because it is founded on a basic contradiction. On the one hand, government action is essential for effective refugee protection. On the other hand, UNHCR RSD is premised on at least partial government failure. Neither direct concern for protection from non-refoulement nor strict legal obligations completely explain UNHCR's current RSD activities. UNHCR's RSD activities seem best explained by what Goodwin-Gill has called 'negative responsibility', and hence can represent a risky shift of responsibility from governments to the UN. At the same time, in some circumstances UNHCR RSD substantially advances refugee rights. In order to match its actual mandate and resources, UNHCR should perform RSD when it can enhance the protection provided to refugees by governments, but the activity should be more limited and conditional than it is today. * Revised May 2004 and December 2005. This article stems in large part from my experience working to develop refugee legal aid and advocacy programs in Egypt and Lebanon from 2001 through 2003. For this opportunity, I am especially grateful to Samira Trad for her courage and determination, and to Liza Hazelton and Prof. Barbara Harrell-Bond for their wisdom and collaboration. The work and research which led to this article was funded by the Initiative for Public Interest Law at Yale, the Clara Belfield & Henry Bates Overseas Travel Fellowship at the University of Michigan Law School, and the American University in Cairo Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program. Michael Alexander and Prof. James C. Hathaway provided useful comments on earlier drafts. The views expressed here are solely my own. 2 Michael Kagan outer fence. Some arrive early in the morning. Most are men, but there are some women and occasionally children. The crowd presses in toward openings in the fence without any clear order; on crowded days they sometimes push each other for position, elbows used for leverage. Every so often voices are raised. These peoplerefugees and asylum-seekers-come to UNHCR with a range of queries, petitions, and complaints. Some have just arrived and want to start their applications for refugee protection. Some have been accepted by UNHCR before, and want to be resettled. Rejected asylum-seekers look for someone to ask how to reopen their cases. Often, just a single person works for UNHCR at the fence, fielding questions from the crowd, trying to distinguish those who should be let into the office, while providing quick answers to others. UN staff often collect inquiries, slips of paper, and documents to take inside and return to the fence with official responses. The refugees and asylum-seekers at the gate often remain for hours, while in the summer the temperatures can reach over 40 degrees in the sun. This daily scene outside UNHCR offices, which I have personally witnessed in both Cairo and Beirut, is the most publicly visible link in an increasingly important but little studied part of refugee protection: the determination of refugee status by UNHCR. Refugee status determination (RSD) is the doorway to the protection and assistance that the international community provides to refugees. In dozens of countries, UNHCR acts as the gatekeeper. In this role, which was little noticed in academic and NGO literature until recently, the UN's refugee agency effectively decides among asylum-seekers who can be saved from deportation and in some cases released from detention, who can get humanitarian assistance, and often who can apply to resettle to third countries. Since the mid-1990s, scholarly and NGO literature has been critical of the way UNHCR performs RSD. In the seminal study on the subject, Michael Alexander argued that UNHCR's RSD systems had been left behind by the standards of fairness developed elsewhere. Other assessments have repeated similar criticism. 2 In September 2005, UNHCR for the first time published comprehensive procedural standards governing its RSD activities. At the same time, UNHCR RSD has steadily grown.
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The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees(UNHCR)
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