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The refugee problem - time for a “new order”

By Guy Goodwin-Gill - posted Friday, 3 March 2006


If only from a rights, solutions and protection perspective, we will need something like an Office of the UNHCR, but it must be fit for the 21st century and organised around improved accountability measures.

Some refugee operations in recent years were seriously compromised by failing to adhere to the protection mandate laid down by the UN General Assembly and backed by international law. Consequently, refugee lives were lost and rights violated.

That experience, however, also confirms the inherent strength and value of a prescribed, universal mandate, while serving as a warning against the compromises that inevitably follow from trespassing outside agency competence and authority.

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Protection can be enhanced, moreover, by recognising and accepting others’ complementary responsibilities. Thus, the natural partner for a refugee protection agency in verifying conditions in countries of origin prior to repatriation is either the UN High Commissioner for Human Rightsz, or a regional human rights mechanism.

The natural partner on behalf of those displaced within their own lands by conflict is the International Committee of the Red Cross. On the other hand, the natural partner in migration-related matters has yet to be determined - the International Organisation for Migration has neither a protection mandate nor enough independence.

The UN’s 60 and more years of experience with refugee issues have also shown that a “temporary” agency is not the way to go. Staffing procedures need radical remodelling to allow the agency to expand and contract efficiently as crises ebb and flow.

Remodelling will also enable career development to blend the benefits of field and central office experience more effectively and humanely. And appropriate investment must be made in building national capacities to offset the expatriate bias of the existing system.

At the inter-state level, the enhanced accountability of a revived refugee protection agency should be matched by strengthened legal competence, particularly in relation to the responsibility already recognised on behalf of the UNHCR to supervise the application of conventions, whether refugee-specific or human rights-based.

A more effective mechanism to oversee and supervise state obligations towards refugees and asylum seekers is sorely needed. Though not reciprocal, the obligations integral to the international refugee regime are nonetheless interlocking and often contingent.

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When states cross the line they must be called to account by the UN’s refugee protection agency, and by the weight of the international community behind it. Experience shows that refugee problems are not solved unilaterally or through Pacific-style solutions imposed on others, but co-operatively and collaboratively.

There will never be perfect equity between states in burdens and responsibilities, anymore than in access to the sea or the continental shelf. Life is not like that, but rather a matter requiring the sharing of burdens and responsibilities.

In short, this is a time for further evolutionary steps in the international protection of refugees, and it must be by way of the path of experience. But where will the impetus for change come from?

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Article edited by Allan Sharp.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.

This article is an edited and abridged version of the third of three lectures Dr Guy Goodwin-Gill gave in Australia in 2005 for the Kenneth Rivett Orations. Part 1 and part 2 have also appeared in On Line Opinion.



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About the Author

Dr Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is currently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford. He was previously the Professor of International Refugee Law at Oxford, the Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, and worked for over a decade for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Other articles by this Author

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Related Links
Beyond self-interest: Australia’s post-Tampa choices - On Line Opinion
Refugee Council of Australia
Refugees - we’d like to help, but … - On Line Opinion

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