This book provides a comparative study of refugee case law in Europe and North America. Nearly five thousand decisions were recorded and one thousand five hundred have been considered in the national reports. This descriptive work is followed by a more analytical part, offering a new way to interpret the definition of a refugee based on three elements: Risk, Persecution and Proof (R.P.P.), summarized in the `Theory of the Three Scales'. This book will be of great interest to organisations, practitioners and decisions makers in Refugee Law, and to scholars of Comparative Law. Of related interest: Europe and Refugees: A Challenge?/L'Europe et les réfugiés: un défi?, edited by Jean-Yves Carlier and Dirk Vanheule (Kluwer Law International, 1997, 90-411-0347-3), contains a collection of essays analysing the plight of refugees today, paying particular attention to the situation in Europe, and to the new European treaties such as the Dublin Convention, the Schengen Agreement and the Resolution of the European Union.

Who is a Refugee?

This ground-breaking volume brings the refugee issue out of the narrow confines of refugee law into the centre of international law and international relations. It reviews the concept of the refugee and the international protection of refugees from the unconventional angle of the prospects and limitations of multilateralism in the post Cold War era. This approach - taking conflict prevention and resolution as its point of departure - ensures that Broadening the Edges: Refugee Definition and International Protection Revisited is not only novel, but comprehensive and practical as well. It is comprehensive because it offers a review of state practice within the United Nations and regional contexts, as well as a review of the practice of the United Nations inter-agency system. It is practical because it is based on the personal experience of its author, not on theoretical models. The broadening concept of security, affecting the attitudes of states towards refugees, is the underlying theme of the book. As a result, the contemporary preoccupation with how best to provide international protection to all those in need of it is reviewed from a number of relevant perspectives - including that of peacekeeping, sanctions, and coordination and competence within the United Nations. Pirkko Kourula worked for some twelve years in UNHCR in Asia, Europe and the USA, and was Deputy Director of UNHCR Liaison Office at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 1991 to 1996. She was also Director for Humanitarian Assistance and Food Aid at FINNIDA, the Finnish International Development Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Broadening the Edges

What duties do liberal democratic states owe to refugees? Does international refugee law impose unfeasible demands on states? This highly original contribution explores what theories of international ethics have to say about refugee policy. It advances an innovative critique of prevalent liberal approaches, showing how their assumptions about moral agency create unfeasible expectations about international justice. It sets out an alternative theory, showing how this could be more adept at mobilizing commitment to refugee rights. The volume will be of interest not just to scholars and students of applied ethics, but also to those more generally interested in debates on refugee and migration policy. It presents a clear and thorough discussion of liberal political theory and its application to questions of international justice, and provides insights into the philosophical sources of debates on liberal versus restrictive approaches to refugee policy.

The Ethics of Refugee Policy

This book is the first full-length study of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Based on recently declassified Israeli, British and American state and party political papers and on hitherto untapped private papers, it traces the stages of the 1947-9 exodus against the backdrop of the first Arab-Israeli war and analyses the varied causes of the flight. The Jewish and Arab decision-making involved, on national and local levels, military and political, is described and explained, as is the crystallisation of Israel's decision to bar a refugee repatriation. The subsequent fate of the abandoned Arab villages, lands and urban neighbourhoods is examined. The study looks at the international context of the war and the exodus, and describes the political battle over the refugees' fate, which effectively ended with the deadlock at Lausanne in summer 1949. Throughout the book attempts to describe what happened rather than what successive generations of Israeli and Arab propagandists have said happened, and to explain the motives of the protagonists.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949

This comprehensive study examines the refugee phenomenon originating in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and suggests the means by which the international community can assist those in greatest need.

Escape from Violence

Violence and other human rights abuses continue to force desperate people to migrate in search of protection. Yet because the political and economic reasons that induced an historical openness to the arrival of refugees have largely withered away, there is no longer a guarantee that any state will be prepared to receive these involuntary migrants. Governments of both North and South are withdrawing from the international legal duty to provide potentially indefinite protection to any and all refugees who arrive at their borders. The challenge is to reconceive refugee protection in a way that is reconcilable with the legitimate concerns of modern states, yet which does not sacrifice the critical right of at-risk people to seek asylum. The essays in Reconceiving International Refugee Law offer a response to the concerns of many states that refugee protection has become no more than a `back door' route to permanent immigration, and that its costs are not fairly apportioned among states. Drawing on the research of leading migration scholars from around the world, and vetted through dialogue with senior officials and non-governmental experts, this volume explores the potential for a shift to a robust and empowering system of temporary asylum, supported by a pragmatic system of guarantees to share both the costs and human responsibilities of refugee protection.

Reconceiving International Refugee Law

"A Convention refugee is a person who is outside her country because she reasonably believes that her civil or political status puts her at risk of serious harm in that country, and that her own government cannot or will not protect her. The Convention refugee definition is of singular importance because it has been subscribed to by more than one hundred nations in the only refugee accords of global scope. Many nations have also chosen to import this standard into their domestic immigration legislation as the basis upon which asylum and other protection decisons are made. Yet this legal definition of a refugee is at odds with the ordinary, social perception of refugee status...This book is an attempt to explain the scope of the Convention refugee definition as drafted, and as it has evolved in practice." -- from the Preface, p. v.

The Law of Refugee Status

International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology

The award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel from Alan Gratz tells the timely--and timeless--story of three different kids seeking refuge. A New York Times bestseller! JOSEF is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world... ISABEL is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America... MAHMOUD is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe... All three kids go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers -- from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, shocking connections will tie their stories together in the end. As powerful and poignant as it is action-packed and page-turning, this highly acclaimed novel has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years and continues to change readers' lives with its meaningful takes on survival, courage, and the quest for home.

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