The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Refugees, Conflict, and International Law (original) (raw)
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The Middle East and the Refugee Crisis: Towards a New Refugee Protection Regime?
Beyond Europe Central Asia, the Middle East and Global Economy, 2021
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.
Researching Internal Displacement, 2021
Since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict close to one decade ago (2011-present), more than one quarter of its population have fled the country to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Another 25% of the population has been internally displaced. By the conflict's seventh year, more than 12 million Syrians were forcibly displaced, half of which were now refugees, and the other half of which became internally displaced (IDPs). Lebanon hosts the largest proportion of refugees compared to its population worldwide, with an estimated 1.5 million refugees between those registered and unregistered. IDPs from Syria are among the world's most vulnerable people. Unlike Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, these IDPs have not crossed an international border to receive the humanitarian protection they need, but have remained inside Syria as the conflict goes on. Even though they have fled from the same conflict, IDPs in Syria remain under the protection of the Syrian government. As citizens, though they do not have access to their rights or any form of protection from their government, they are considered entitled to their rights and protection under both human rights and international humanitarian law, and thus have a different legal standing to refugees from Syria who reside in Lebanon. Interestingly, both these populations (refugees and IDPs) are assisted by UNHCR. The paper discusses the two types of displacement the Syrian population has experienced (across borders and internally) through a comparative approach. The paper intends to challenge the notions of protection and displacement, through shedding light on the Syrian case, while also discussing definitions of refugee and IDP in contemporary conflicts and how these "labels" affect access to labor, citizenship, mobility and rights for the same population.
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.
Syrians Displaced by Civil Conflict: What Are the Implications from International Law?
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
The Syrian civil conflict has caused approximately 2.7 million Syrians to leave their country since 2011, and double that many are expected to have fled Syria by the end of 2015. The Syrian displacement of what will be the refugee aspect of the crisis that has received very little attention: that is, the implications of international law at the international, regional and domestic level affecting the rights and status of the refugees flooding out of Syria. As it is described in this paper, countries currently hosting the vast majority of the refugee flow out of Syria are stretched to the limits of their resources. Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkey have huge refugee population pre-dating the Syrian Influx. Many if not most, of these preexisting refugee groups live in desperate conditions, and host countries cannot meet all the refugees' assistance and protection needs.
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Temporary Refuge from War: Customary International Law and the Syrian Conflict
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The rule of temporary refuge forms the cornerstone of the response of States to large-scale influx of refugees. In the context of civilians fleeing armed conflict, this legal rule imposes a positive obligation on all States to admit and not to return anyone to a situation where there is a risk to life, and to provide basic rights commensurate with human dignity. Also implicit in the rule is the expectation of shared responsibility for large numbers of refugees and of international cooperation towards finding durable solutions. This article examines the customary international law of temporary refuge (also known as temporary protection) in relation to the Syrian conflict. It discusses implementation of the rule in the practice of three countries neighbouring Syria, and in the EU. It finds that the practice of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan has been consistent with the rule of temporary refuge. However, the EU has decided not to use the Temporary Protection Directive; instead individual M...
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RCIS Working Papers present scholarly research of all disciplines on issues related to immigration and settlement. The purpose is to stimulate discussion and collect feedback. The views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of RCIS. For a complete list of RCIS publications, visit www.ryerson.ca/rcis
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: Regional and Human Security Implications
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The Refugee Population: An Overview Defined as the “worst humanitarian disaster since the end of the cold war,”1 the Syrian civil war has to date claimed over 200,000 casualties, including over 8,000 documented killings of children under eighteen years of age.2 In a country of approximately 22 million people, the bloody and prolonged conflict has resulted in 7.6 million internally displaced persons and an additional 3.2 million refugees, as well as approximately 12.2 million people (more than 1 in 2 Syrians) in need of humanitarian aid to survive.3 Over 700,000 Syrians have registered as refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2014 alone, with an average of approximately 70,000 Syrians fleeing their country every month.4 Even though the average monthly number of new refugees has declined since 2013, the regional crisis is by no means subsiding, especially as it becomes clear that returning to Syria will not be a viable option in the short or medium...
Preliminary thoughts on the Syrian refugee movement
New Perspectives on Turkey, 2016
While forced migration has, in many ways, defined global history, Syria's recent experiences with forced migration will, in time, prove to occupy a unique place. The cruelty of the war and of the Syrian refugee movement, circulated through media images, has exposed the near bankruptcy of not only the national but also the international refugee protection system. The current migration flows have carried all the tensions and conflicts in the Middle East into Turkey, at a time when responses to demands for more democracy have been met with political repression in the west of the country and military repression in the east. The preliminary significance of this conjuncture for Turkey is clear: the state must rethink and reconfigure its relations with the groups that were once part of Ottoman geographies, as well as those ignored since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. The various groups arriving from Syria-Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmens, Armenians, and Yezidis-carry with them varied contentious political histories. Thus, refugees may be initially classified as Syrian, but may then subsequently be grouped as either "friend" or "enemy" along lines of ethnicity and/or religion. 1 This calls for a more textured analysis of Syrian refugee flows to Turkey, which is currently missing. This commentary aims to offer some preliminary reflections on the Syrian refugee crisis. First of all, we have to note that the tragedies of the Syrian refugee flow and its aftermath have exposed the limits of organizations both international, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees