Questioning the eradication framing of global statelessness work: IBelong and beyond

Detention, denial, and death: migration hazards for refugee children.

Syria: the neglected health crisis deepens

This chapter explores whether the in-state protection afforded by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to IDPs constitutes ‘protection of that country’ under the Refugee Convention and may thus be used by refugee-receiving states as a reason to deny refugee status. First, it explains the UNHCR’s role with IDPs as well as how international law and refugee law have evolved in response to the growing influence of non-state actors. It then uses both treaty interpretation and relevant domestic and international case law to determine whether protection offered by international organizations such as the UNHCR qualifies as ‘protection of that country’. The chapter argues that the UNHCR is not capable in law or in fact of providing ‘protection of that country’, and hence its activities with IDPs do not—at least in a legal sense—undermine its protection mandate towards refugees.

Response to Syria's health crisis—poor and uncoordinated

International organization and administration — International officials — UN High Commissioner for Refugees — Representative in Belgium — Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951 — Belgian law on the control of aliens, 1952 — Decision within framework of Belgian procedure for granting, refugee status — Whether subject to control of Belgian Conseil d’Etat — The law of BelgiumThe individual in international law — Aliens — Expulsion of aliens — Procedure of expulsion — Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951 — Belgian law on the control of aliens 1952 — Application for recognition of refugee status — Prohibition on expulsion prior to decision on refugee status and consultation of Consultative Committee for Aliens — Failure by alien to follow procedure for applying for refugee status — Whether entitled to decision on status and consultation of Consultative Committee before expulsion — Difference between refoulement and renvoi — The law of Belgium

Meeting the health needs of Iraqi refugees in Jordan

This contribution argues that despite the fact that the United Nations Refugee Convention does not cover persons subject to climate change induced displacement, these people should be protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the case because UNHCR's own Executive Committee has incorporated the broader African definition of a refugee that does include climate refugees into their protection mandate. We therefore conclude that UNHCR should exercise protection activities over climate refugees to be consistent with the mandate given to this United Nations programme by international law. To arrive at this conclusion we first briefly introduce the question about the protection of climate change induced displacement in the social science debate. We examine the legal definitions of refugees, agreeing with the most common interpretations of both United Nations and regional instruments. We then indicate how, by expressly extending its mandate, UNHCR itself has taken on the responsibility for the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement. Finally, we report how, despite this mandate, UNHCR is still refusing to exercise its mandate properly, and that if it were to do so, a significant step could be taken in ensuring the protection of people subject to climate change induced displacement.

Chronic disease care crisis for Lebanon's Syrian refugees

South Africa failing people displaced by xenophobia riots

A variety of mechanisms exits at the international level for the protection of refugees, the term finds its definitive meanings in various international instruments. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has advocated a broad interpretation of these instruments in favor of those who are in need of international protection, this chapter focuses on how various UN human rights bodies may use them to enhance the protection of refugees. The author argues that while the UN human rights bodies may not provide a reliable and accessible framework of protection, the chapter provides a number of examples on how the refugee advocates may resort to these mechanisms to-enhance protection principles and enable forms of enforcement. The chapter reiterates how refugee advocates and other related NGOs must play an important role for this positive evolution to result in effective linkages between core human rights standards and refugee protection standards. Keywords:human rights; international organisations; protection of refugees; UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Refugee repatriation rests on a fundamental norm: the right of return. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) styles itself as the chief defender of international norms on refugees, educating refugees about their rights and socialising states to respect the cardinal rules of the refugee regime. However, UNHCR initially devoted little attention to the right of return. When UNHCR began to engage more actively with repatriation in the 1980s, it had only a nascent institutional conceptualisation of the right of return: it framed the implementation of the right of return as a non-political, humanitarian undertaking, and assumed sovereign states had largely unfettered discretion in its implementation. Drawing on extensive material from the UNHCR archives on repatriation movements from Honduras to El Salvador in the 1980s, this article examines how refugees themselves have influenced the governance of return by serving as norm entrepreneurs, localising the right of return and socialising UNHCR to rethink and support broader interpretations of this principle. It analyzes how Salvadoran refugees envisioned the right of return as a collective and deeply political process of asserting citizenship claims, and took direct action to implement this right, compelling UNHCR and government actors to adjust to their vision. These experiences have important implications for understandings of the right of return as an international norm, and the roles of refugees themselves as actors in norm localisation and socialisation processes. Reinforcing and expanding on recent studies of how refugees actively shape aid efforts, peacebuilding and the resolution of displacement, this study highlights the significance of subaltern power in the refugee regime, showing how it can reverberate across different sites and scales to definitively influence not only the execution of the regime’s core functions but also the interpretation of the normative commitments underpinning it.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created over 50 years ago to be a human rights and advocacy organization. But governments also created the agency to promote regional and international stability and to serve the interest of states. Consequently, the UNHCR has always trod a perilous path between its mandate to protect refugees and asylum seekers and the demands placed upon it by states to be a relevant actor in international relations. A key focus is to examine the extent to which the evolution of the UNHCR has been framed by the crucial events of international politics and international security during the past half century and how, in turn, the actions of the first eight High Commissioners have helped shape the course of world history. A central objective is to analyse the development of national and international refugee policies and actions, placing these within the broader contexts of the changing global political and security environments in the Cold War and post–Cold War eras. One of the core findings is that UNHCR has over‐stretched itself in recent decades and has strayed from its central human rights protection role.

Mental health of Syrian refugees: looking backwards and forwards

Purpose – Fleet management is a key function in humanitarian organizations, but is not always recognized as such. This results in poor performance and negative impacts on the organization. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrates how the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) managed to substantially improve its fleet management through the introduction of an Internal Leasing Program (ILP), in which headquarters procures vehicles and leases them to field offices. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops a framework for fleet management based on a longitudinal case study with UNHCR. It compares fleet performance indicators before and after implementation of an ILP. Findings – At UNHCR, vehicle procurement was driven by availability of funding. Fleet management was highly decentralized and field offices had limited awareness of its importance. These systems and behaviors led to major challenges for the organization. The introduction of the ILP positively impacted fleet management at UNHCR by reducing fleet size, average age of fleet and procurement costs. Practical implications – This paper provides fleet managers with a tool for analyzing their fleet. The frameworks and actions described in this paper contain practical recommendations for achieving a well-performing fleet. Originality/value – This paper is the first to analyze fleet management before and after introduction of an ILP. It describes the benefits of this model based on empirical data, and develops frameworks to be used by researchers and practitioners.

The international refugee protection system, which was set up in the wake of the Second World War, has been showing signs of strain for some time now. Some say that it is ill-suited to meet today's challenges, especially those posed by globalization. In a world in which information, capital, goods, and services flow ever more freely across borders, the uncontrolled movement of people is increasingly seen as a threat to the sovereignty of states. Sadly, in an age of global terrorism, it is also seen as a security risk. When the contemporary refugee regime was established, it was predicated on the willingness of states to relinquish a certain amount of sovereignty, in order to ensure that the basic human rights of a specific category of threatened individuals--refugees--would always be protected. On December 14, 1950, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 428 (V) establishing the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and giving it a mandate to operate on the territory of sovereign states on behalf of an especially vulnerable group of non-citizens--refugees. Just six months later, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted. It established an obligation for states to protect refugees from being returned to situations of danger and to grant them a certain basket of rights normally reserved for citizens. The willingness of states to agree to this visionary system was in part a recognition that their performance in 1938 at the Evian Conference, and subsequently in turning back Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany, should never be repeated. But it was no doubt also a sign of how little they could imagine the complexity which refugee problems would acquire. In 1951, refugee problems indeed seemed limited in nature and in scope. As a result, the UNHCR was initially given just a three-year mandate. The agency was tasked with finding new homes for around 1.3 million refugees remaining from the Second World War, and would then be dissolved. After that first three-year period, the General Assembly renewed UNHCR's mandate every five years until just a few months ago, in December 2003, it finally lifted altogether the time limitation on UNHCR's mandate, a sobering recognition of the apparent permanence of the world's refugee problems. Today, countries in both the developing and the developed world are expressing growing dissatisfaction with the international refugee system and are looking for new approaches to refugee problems. The reasons for this dissatisfaction are different in the North and in the South, but the implications are strikingly similar: the rights of refugees and asylum seekers will increasingly be jeopardized, unless ways of addressing states' concerns can be found. In the developing countries, which host the overwhelming majority of the world's refugees, the threat to asylum arises from the large number of protracted refugee situations (70 per cent of the world's refugees have been in exile for more than five years, according to the UNHCR), the absence of durable solutions, the limited capacity of host states to meet refugees' needs, and inadequate burden sharing on the part of the wealthy countries. This is coupled with real or perceived linkages between the presence of refugees and threats to national or regional security, and the rising xenophobia which accompanies all of the above. In the industrialized world, the strains on the system are caused by irregular migration, the risk it is seen to pose to the security of states and communities, and the abuse or misuse of asylum channels. States lament the high cost of maintaining individual refugee status determination mechanisms, the failure of the many restrictive measures they have crafted to produce the desired results, and the related growth of people smuggling and trafficking. Industrialized countries also face serious difficulties, both practical and legal, in removing persons they find not to be in need of protection. …