Dear Colleagues

The Refugee Law Initiative has recently published two new working papers that may be of interest:

1. No.10, October 2013: The 'Left-to-Die Boat' incident of March 2011: Questions of International Responsibility arising from the Failure to Save Refugees at Sea, Efthymios Papastavridis, Part-time Lecturer, Democritus University of Thrace: http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4957/ 
Abstract: On Sunday, 8 May 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian reported the story of a boat carrying 72 persons, among them asylum seekers, women and children, which left Tripoli (Libya) for the Italian island of Lampedusa at the end of March 2011. After 16 days at sea, the boat was washed up on the Libyan shore with only 11 survivors. In this particular incident, it is remarkable that many of the vessels or helicopters, which allegedly failed to save these people, were at that time taking part in NATO's Operation Unified Protector. This has elicited criticism about NATO's and its Member States' failure to respond to the relevant distress calls and to anticipate adequately for an exodus of asylum seekers and refugees from Libya in the course of the said Operation. The long list of 'failures' in this respect was identified in a Report adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons of the Council of Europe (29 March 2012).The present paper discusses the issues of responsibility for human rights violations arising from this incident, including the potential responsibility of NATO. Firstly, there is a succinct reference to the primary obligations incumbent upon the States or NATO in this regard, namely obligations under human rights law. This is followed by a discussion of the secondary rules of international responsibility and their application to this particular incident; in particular, the responsibility of each and every State involved in the latter as well as of NATO is assessed accordingly.

2. No.9, October 2013: Country Guidance in Asylum cases: Approaches in the UK and Sweden, Rebecca Stern, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Faculty of Law, Uppsala University: http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4956/ 
Abstract: The fundamental issue in asylum adjudication has been described as ensuring that those at risk of persecution on their return are afforded the protection to which they are entitled under international and national law, while preventing those who are not at risk from exploiting the asylum process as an alternative route of entry. Information on the situation in a particular country or region is essential both for judging the objective risk of harm upon return for the asylum seeker and the assessment of the claimant's narrative. Judges and decision makers therefore need to have access to detailed, reliable and up-to-date information. It is equally important that they do not reach dramatically different conclusions on the same material as this would jeopardise the predictability of decision making, rendering it arbitrary and unfair. The manner in which guidance is provided on how questions of law and fact are to be interpreted in order to achieve consistency and predictability varies between countries, depending on their legal systems and traditions. In the United Kingdom, a system of Country Guidance cases has developed which provides guidance on the situation in a particular country or region. This is to a large extent binding on similar cases. In Sweden as well as in many other European countries, there is no similar system. In this working paper, it is discussed how the matter of country guidance is approached in Sweden and the United Kingdom respectively. It is suggested that for a system of country guidance cases to be introduced not only does a number of practical requirements need to be fulfilled; it is equally necessary that providing guidance on matters of fact rather than on purely legal matters is a task accepted and embraced as such by the courts and one that is considered compatible with the legal tradition of the country in question.

The full Series can be found here: http://rli.sas.ac.uk/research-and-publications/refugee-law-initiative-working-papers-series/. 

Best wishes,
Mehrunnisa

Mehrunnisa Yusuf
Academic Support Officer
Refugee Law Initiative
Human Rights Consortium|School of Advanced Study|University of London
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, UK
 
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________________________________________

 Dear all,

Ayar Ata, PhD student with IDEARs, has contributed a short piece to the Weeks Centre blog about a conference paper about his work on the Kurdish diaspora in London, which he presented in Calcutta earlier this year (http://weekscentreforsocialandpolicyresearch.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/living-experiences-of-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-in-the-uk/). 

Ayar's post joins a stimulating collection of pieces posted this month so if you haven't had time previously, please do visit the blog and join these debates.

Best wishes,
Nicola Horsley
Research Fellow
 
Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research 
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road, London, SE1 0AA
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02078155403
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Read our blog: http://weekscentreforsocialandpolicyresearch.wordpress.com/  
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