The international refugee system is broken, new measures are needed
For decades, Europe and other developed states have poured billions into migration control to keep refugees from arriving and being able to apply for asylum. Where unilateral measures were applied in the past, foreign policy and international cooperation is today the preferred mode of action. Such measures involve everything from diplomatic agreements to joint patrolling between sponsoring and partner states.
“For developed states, this is a way to ensure that the refugees do not reach their territory, while simultaneously insulating themselves from legal liability under international refugee and human rights law,” Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Research Director at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, explains.
Gammeltoft-Hansen has just published an article together with professor James C. Hathaway, a leading scholar and highly influential voice in international refugee law in the current issue of Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.
The hypocrisy of the developed world
Behind these new strategies is a wish by developed states to be seen as formally respecting international law, yet in practice avoid taking on any substantial part of the burden of providing protection in the current global refugee crisis.
“In this way, developed states can continue to push the obligations of less wealthy states to respect the Refugee Convention. Continuing to put the burden on those countries who host the vast majority of the world’s refugees,” Gammeltoft-Hansen says.
But, according to Gammeltoft-Hansen and Hathaway, the core assumption behind this strategy is false:
“Drawing together evolving practice from different strands of international law, we show that – contrary to what sponsoring states believe – core obligations remain when states attempt to outsource migration control. Moreover, those forms of cooperation ensuring the highest degree of control by sponsoring states, are exactly those most likely to attract legal liability,” Gammeltoft-Hansen says.
Developed states are thus faced with a trade-off between the efficiency of cooperation and the ability to avoid their obligations under international refugee and human rights law.
New system is needed
The current approach to refugee protection by developed states is fundamentally unsustainable, and must be replaced with a system predicated on the meaningful sharing of the burdens and responsibilities of refugee protection around the world, the authors argue.
Such a system could deliver to developed states the manageability they so keenly seek, but do so in a way that ensures attention to — rather than avoids — the needs and legitimate aspirations of both refugees and the poorer states that host them.
”What we really hope to provoke with this article, is a more frank conversation about the developed world’s duplicitous commitment to the international refugee regime. A new system could deliver the manageability developed states so keenly seek, but do so in a way that ensures attention to – rather than avoids – the needs of both refugees and the poorer states that host them,” Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen explains.