The State and the Post-Cold War Refugee Regime: New Models, New Questions

Abstract

This article identifies the attributes of a shift from a Cold War refugee paradigm to a post-Cold War refugee paradigm and, within this shift, locates challenges to the statist paradigm. It asks, how has the changed role of the State in today's ‘globalized’ society affected the refugee regime? Conversely, how does today's refugee regime re-figure the role of the State? While other observers have commented on specific changes in the refugee regime, this essay attempts to place the paradigm shift within a conceptual framework, and from this framework to pose the kind of questions which must be asked if the human rights of refugees are to be protected. The article concludes that within the refugee regime the move away from States and adherence to States are two sides of the same coin. First, the new refugee regime reflects the trend away from the State and strict notions of sovereignty. At the same time, however, the new regime exposes the staying power of the statist paradigm: The role of States has indeed been altered, but States retain their role as important and often essential actors. States still hold the key to asylum and to permanent, durable solutions and, it follows, States are most often essential actors in efforts to protect the human rights of the uprooted. Within this new paradigm, argues the author, trans-sovereign forces must find a way to address the needs of the uprooted when States fail to do so.