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This Article discusses the current migratory crisis as one instance of a conceptual mismatch in human rights between formal law and the tools that courts and other quasi-judicial bodies actually utilize in adjudication. While the doctrine centers around individual right-holders, enforcement bodies provide a remedy only when there is a state duty-holder. Human rights scholarship regarding refugees focuses on the right to freedom of movement. However, this right frequently offers little benefit to these individuals adrift at sea or wandering in the desert. An alternative framing might ultimately be more effective before human rights courts and other quasi-judicial bodies. This framing does not start with the rightholder but instead with the question of who the duty-holder is. Specifically, I differentiate plaintiffs based on whether they can articulate their claim in a way that identifies one discrete state duty-holder. This revised understanding helps explain why the claims of so many individuals who are between states today do not in fact lend themselves to human rights litigation. Their plight is better served in the political arena, seeking public support for negotiation. At the same time, this approach opens potential pathways for human rights litigation to buttress protections currently afforded under the 1951 Refugee Convention to individuals on the run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Security Council's ("UNSC") counterterrorism resolutions are overbroad, and have resulted in European Union ("EU") laws and policies that mislabel innocent individuals, particularly refugees, as "terrorists." The 1951 Refugee Convention requires that countries provide refugees--those fleeing persecution--with protection, allowing for only a few narrow exceptions. However, a wave of post-9/11 UNSC counterterrorism resolutions have led to the enactment of a host of new laws and policies by the EU and EU member states that have resulted in the widespread denial of protection to many refugees seeking asylum in Europe. This is due to the fact that these resolutions may label individuals who have had any contact with terrorist organizations as terrorists--including, in some cases, where an individual was held captive by a terrorist group. As many laws make it illegal for countries to grant asylum to terrorists, the implementation of the UNSC's counterterrorism resolutions in EU law has resulted in the widespread denial of protection to many refugees seeking asylum in Europe. From a legal perspective, these laws and policies are a de facto violation of the Refugee Convention, as well as broader international human rights law and EU law, which require that, save for very rare and prescribed circumstances, those fleeing persecution must be granted protection. From a policy perspective, while European governments' goals of barring terrorists from entering their borders may be in line with their security objectives, these policies must be reevaluated, as the harm that they cause refugees is far greater than the possible security benefits they confer. This is particularly true for Middle Eastern refugees, many of whom are often fleeing the violence of UN-labeled terrorist groups in the region, and many of whom are the most likely to be negatively impacted by these counterterrorism policies. It is imperative that the UNSC and the EU shift counterterrorism policies to comply with international law and protect Middle Eastern refugees fleeing persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that a climate migration policy in Africa is needed to address internal and cross-border climate-related migration and reduce forced displacement. Topics covered include the concern about the lack of clear international or regional legal frameworks governing the protection of displaced individuals, the need to consider adaptation and resiliency planning when tackling the issue of internal migration, and the potential of the African passport and free-movement initiative.

The article explores the outdated 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and amended by the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, has caused the abandonment of the plight of climate migrants. Topics covered include the failure of the legal framework to foresee the threats that would force people to become refugees in the 21st century, and the role that climate change has played in driving Central American families from their homes.

On June 11, 2018, then U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a decision that signifies a regression in the willingness to protect women fleeing from domestic violence through the framework of the Refugee Convention. By contrast, this Article argues that International Refugee Law would benefit from an additional mode of engagement with feminism. Instead of introducing feminist theory into International Refugee Law, we suggest--in light of the underlying commonality among all women, regardless of status--that, in some jurisdictions, International Refugee Law would benefit from conjoining advocacy efforts on behalf of refugee women with those undertaken on behalf of marginalized and disempowered women more generally. Such a shift would be of particular importance in jurisdictions where the legal, social, or political willingness to protect and promote women's rights outweighs the willingness to protect the rights of refugees. Stemming from a more fundamental human rights framework that explicitly includes women as humans, this legal perspective would provide deeper protection to asylum-seeking women, changing the legal focus from questions of status determination as to whether someone--man or woman--qualifies for protection as a refugee--to broader questions regarding the personhood of women and the entire set of necessary civil, social, economic, and cultural rights deriving from said personhood. In other words, the shift would be from a mostly negative-duty of protection perspective to a dual negativeand positive-duty perspective. This shift would also create opportunities for solidarity between asylum-seeking women and other women, including other immigrants, residents, citizens, national minorities, and general feminist and women's rights groups. Such a linkage would allow asylum-seeking women to benefit from the progress already achieved by feminist movements regarding women's rights, rather than marginalizing them and confining them to seek their rights exclusively as refugees. The call for mainstreaming the discourse on refugee rights into the discourse on women's rights offers an important theoretical contribution that goes beyond the discussion of asylum-seeking women's rights. Namely, this Article explores the question of whether it is strategically, theoretically, or doctrinally preferable to advocate for the rights of refugees via instruments of International Human Rights, rather than via International Refugee Law, and if so, under what circumstances. We find significant arguments in favor of abandoning the prevailing view that International Refugee Law is a separate branch of international law to be applied and interpreted according to its own fundamental concepts, and in isolation from other areas of international law. Instead, we argue that international conventions on human rights are applicable to refugees, as they apply to "all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction," or "everyone," and not merely to members of the political community. We demonstrate the feasibility of our argument with a regional focus on the treatment of asylum-seeking women in Israel. The exploration of the questions in this Article draws on the work of the Coalition on Asylum Seeking Women and Children in Israel, which constitutes a rich, novel, and groundbreaking approach to the advocacy on behalf of asylum-seeking women. The Coalition has been operating since September 2016, and consists of women's rights, migrant women's rights, and children's rights organizations and clinics. By embedding this theoretical and doctrinal legal question in the lived experience of women asylum seekers and women's rights advocates, the examination of the advocacy efforts and raison d'etre of the Coalition could demonstrate how this model can be applied in additional jurisdictions, mutatis mutandis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of individuals fleeing drug and gang-related violence in Central America's Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) has increased exponentially in recent years. Mexico (with financial assistance from the United States) has apprehended and detained many of these refugees on their way to the United States. As a result, the number of asylum applications filed by Central Americans in Mexico increased by a factor of ten between 2014 and 2017. At the same time as these events have been unfolding, Mexico has been adding numerous human rights provisions to its national Constitution, including the right to asylum. Its Constitution has also broadened the scope of refugee protection to include not only the five grounds permitted under the 1951 Refugee Convention (persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group) but also flight from armed conflict, massive violations of human rights, and "other circumstances which have severely disturbed the public order." On paper, at least, Mexico is in the vanguard of the ever-expanding number of countries which have recently constitutionalized the right to asylum. This Article analyzes whether Mexico's recent constitutional amendments are mere words on parchment or the means for greater protection for refugees from Central America and elsewhere. It is the first empirical study of lawyers' efforts to use constitutionalized human rights law on behalf of refugees in Mexico and how those efforts have been received by Mexican courts. Based on judicial decisions and interviews with lawyers involved in recent strategic litigation challenging the Mexican government's policies and practices toward refugees, it identifies those circumstances under which constitutionalized human rights law is more likely to result in positive outcomes for non-citizens seeking relief from persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Note problematizes the role and purposes of international criminal law under the international refugee regime. Article 1A of the 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person who has left his or her country of nationality and is unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Article 1F of the Convention contains exceptions to Article 1A that exclude certain individuals from refugee status. Article 1F(a), the focus of this Note, denies refugee status if there are serious reasons for considering that the asylum applicant "has committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, as defined in the international instruments drawn up to make provision in respect of such crimes." The framework of the Convention, through the structure of Article 1, thus situates international crimes at the center of the refugee regime. By striking a balance between protecting the world's most vulnerable people and denying safe haven to international criminals, the Convention's drafters contemplated a role for international criminal law, a body of statutes and jurisprudence that would develop significantly in the ensuing decades. The result is the adjudication of international criminal law doctrines in domestic immigration tribunals--unequivocally civil, not criminal, settings. Adjudicators in asylum hearings must grapple with evolving and sometimes inconsistent principles of international criminal law that have grown out of ad hoc tribunals and culminated in the International Criminal Court at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century. The stakes of this assimilation of international criminal law into the refugee context are high: many more individuals allegedly implicated in international crimes pass through immigration tribunals than will set foot in international criminal courts. Immigration tribunals across the globe have become scattered echoes of international criminal courts, attempting to tailor international criminal law to a non-criminal context where the stakes of life and liberty are exceedingly high. There is a need for a coordinated global effort to develop clear and consistent principles from international criminal law that are suitable for exclusion proceedings. Until then, the Convention's guarantee of protection may be elusive even for those who need it most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the way in which states should treat asylum seekers who want to enter the country undocumented under the international law. The authors argue that states have a moral duty toward asylum seekers under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. They explain the principle of non-rejection at the border and its application to asylum seekers. The relevance of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) compared to other international law is also discussed.