1. Refugees: A Legal Discussion
Nicole Lindbergh

2. No one would leave home unless home chased you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly.
Home, by Warsan Shire

3. The Crisis You Know: 51% of refugees are children.
55% of refugees come from:
Syria (5.5 million)
Afghanistan (2.5 million)
South Sudan (1.4 million)
65.6 million displaced people in the world (UNHCR 2017)
22.5 million refugees
40.3 million internally displaced people
2.8 million asylum seekers

4. Learning Objectives: 1 2 3 4 5 6 What is a refugee?
What are the rights of refugees? 2
Why and how do they leave? 3
What happens to refugees? 4
What are the legal mechanisms that protect refugees? 5
What are our obligations towards them? 6
Learning Objectives:

5. No one would choose to crawl under fences, be beaten until your shadow leaves you, raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of the boat because you are darker, be sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, be pitied, lost your name, lose your family, make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
Home, by Warsan Shire

6. What is a refugee?

7. Any person who: “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or, who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events is unable, or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” –UN Convention on Refugees, 1951, revised 1967
What is a refugee?

8. What does that mean? You must be persecuted.
You must not have protection on the basis of your nationality or citizenship.
You must be unable to return to your home country based on that fear of persecution.

9. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well.
Home, by Warsan Shire

10. Implicit Definitions
Irregular exit and alienage: you must already have left your country and be outside of a government’s protection
If you can immigrate legally and willingly, you cannot be a refugee.
Implied plurality: You must belong to a group that is being persecuted.
Nexus of persecution: You must be persecuted for the following things:
Race
Religion
Nationality
Political Orientation
Social group

11. What are the rights of refugees?

12. What is a refugee?
Any person who: “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or, who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events is unable, or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” –UN Convention on Refugees, 1951, revised 1967

13. Rights:
Dignity
Protection against refoulment
Citizenship

14. BIG DISTINCTION
Refugees, ultimately, are deprived of citizenship, and are therefore entitled to citizenship.
They are not entitled to specific citizenship or hosting in specific countries

15. Who is not a refugee?
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and any refugee-like individual who has not irregularly exited their country of origin
40 million people qualify as IDPs.
Women oppressed because of their gender.
Migrants forced out by climate change.
Not persecution, technically.
Economic migrants
People searching for a better life
People fleeing “generalized violence”
Refers to harm that affects you that is not related to the critical nexus of traits that could label it as persecution.
E.g. gang violence, war, etc.

16. Status Determination Refugee Status Determination Prima facie
Determined by agencies/states
Individual basis
Interview process
Status endures until conditions change
Given by states
Applied for a set time period
Applies to whole groups

17. You have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land
Home, by Warsan Shire

18. Three Durable Solutions of Refugees:
VOLUNTARY repatriation
Local integration
Resettlement
Three Durable Solutions of Refugees:

19. How do they leave?

20. Irregular Exit By Sea By Land Extremely treacherous
Interdiction possible…
Operation Vigilant Sentry
Australia’s aggressive interdiction policy
Illegally crossing borders
Weeks or months of walking
Smugglers
For profit illegal smugglers
Friendly smugglers
Churches, ironically

23. Who would choose to spend days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles travelled meant something more than journey.
Home, by Warsan Shire

24. What are the legal mechanisms protecting refugees?

25. Adjudicative procedures
Host Countries
Convention Signatories
Harbor impermanently refugees until they are repatriated, resettled, or are allowed to integrate.
Right to asylum
Obligated to perform adjudicative procedures themselves or to disjunctively adjudicate them through intermediates
Refugee Status Determination (RSD)
Prima facie status

26. Who are the host countries?
Turkey (2.9 million)
Kurdish Regional Government* (2.3 million)
Pakistan (1.4 million)
Lebanon (1.0 million)
Iran (979,400)
Uganda (940,800)
Ethiopia (761,600)
Who are the host countries?

27. What happens to refugees?

28. No one chooses refugee camps or strip searches where your body is left aching, or prison, because prison is safer than a city of fire and one prison guard in the night is better than a truckload of men, who look like your father no one could take it no one could stomach it no one skin is tough enough.
Home, by Warsan Shire

29. Refugee Camps
The average refugee spends years in a refugee camp (UNHCR).
Intergenerational element
Detainee facilities?
Enormous cost to host countries
UNHCR
Huge controversy

32. Three Durable Solutions of Refugees:
VOLUNTARY repatriation
Local integration
Resettlement
Three Durable Solutions of Refugees:

33. 552,200 refugees returned in 2016
Most returned to Afghanistan
Protection against refoulment still stands: must be voluntary
Repatriation

34. Resettlement 189,300 refugees resettled
96,000 resettled to the United States
FAMILY REUNIFICATION!
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Subsidiary protection
Humane right to stay

35. And if you survive and you are greeted on the other side, with go home blacks, refugees, dirty immigrants, asylum seekers sucking our country dry of milk… look what they’ve done to their own countries what will they do to ours?
Home, by Warsan Shire

36. What are our obligations towards them?

37. EVERY SIGNATORY’S OBLIGATIONS
RESPECT rights of refugees
RESPECT
SECURE rights of refugees
SECURE
PROTECT rights of refugees
PROTECT

38. Should we change the definition of refugee?
“The term "refugee" shall also apply to every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality.”

39. I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore
Home, by Warsan Shire