(Cross-posted; apologies for duplication.)

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Could we ask that you set this letter aside from the usual stream of
announcements, invitations and the like, and ask that you, as
someone involved in international refugee matters, devote three full,
undisturbed minutes to what we are announcing? We deliver news of
a unique undertaking, the result of the cooperation not only of the eight
of us signing this letter, but of many more colleagues, collaborators,
supporting publishers etc. We have produced a book, or to be more
precise an on-line publication, The Refugee Law Reader, Cases,
Document and Materials, which if printed in whole would extend to
several thousand pages. It can be accessed by all users, free of charge,
at http://www.larc.info/reader/


Our aim was to compile an ideal, "living" reader in refugee lawfor the
use of professors, lawyers, advocates, and students across a wide
range of national jurisdictions, offering a  flexible course structure that
can be easily adapted to meet a   range of training and  research needs.
In its entirety, The Refugee Law Reader is   designed to provide a full
curriculum for a 48-hour course. The Reader is divided into   four major
chapters:  migration and conceptual frameworks; international refugee
law,   centered around the  1951 Geneva Convention; the European
asylum system (including   relevant EU, Council  of Europe and ECHR
materials); and finally the actors inhabiting   these realms.


Each section identifies the relevant hard and soft law and jurisprudence,
and provides a    selected list of academic literature for core and
extendedreading. The great advantage    of the Reader is that the user
gets a ready-made, carefully hand-picked digest of the    field, which is
on-line and instantly available. Unlike printed textbooks, the Reader is
able to provide the complete text of all of our selected material, andas a
"living" book it    can be updated more regularly to keep pace with the
rapid developments in the field of    asylum law. Publishers and authors -
with extremely rare exceptions - were willing to    release their copyright
for this purpose, so articles that are not accessible in libraries    lacking
full-text journal subscriptions, and book chapters which were not
digitized at all    before we scanned them, are now at the fingertips of
refugee law students in Chisinau,    Essex, Brooklyn or any other corner
of the globe. Although eighty five percent of the    material in the Reader
is accessible to all users, for a number of academic articles    copyright
could only be acquired on the basis of password protection,which
means that    refugee law clinics within the LARC network have access
to them, but the general public    won't.

Our three minutes are nearly up, so we should conclude with a few
caveats. Selections    can always be improved. Take our word seriously:
we will be grateful if you criticize our    choices and offer alternatives.
This is especially true, since frequently we opted for texts    which we
might have authored or be affiliated with in one way or another (easing
the    copyright hurdle); but the "ideal reader" should only contain the
best pieces, so please    come forward with your suggestions. You can
send your comments to [log in to unmask] .    Some of you might have
encountered an earlier, preliminary version of the Reader which    was
released for test purposes within a very narrow circle. Please remove it
from your    computers, because this version has been enriched with
many hundreds of hours of    work and is much more advanced.
Needless to say, we would be grateful if you spread    theword on the
availability of the Reader, which will be updated regularly to take into
account your suggestions and fast-moving changes in normative and
jurisprudential    material. Please visit the site and read the "About the
Reader" section which introduces    the Reader and offers guidance as
to how it may be used as a research and training tool,    as well as
providing information on the people and institutions behind the project-
like    LARC, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and (last but not least)
UNHCR - without    whom it could never have been realized.


Budapest, Dublin and the virtual space, 5 March 2004.


With all best wishes,
Rosemary Byrne, Editor-in-Chief;
Jean-Claude Forget,
Maryellen Fullerton,
Elspeth Guild,
Boldizsar Nagy,
Eugen Osmochescu,
Steve Peers,
Jens Vedsted-Hansen, Editors


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Note: The material contained in this communication comes to you from the
Forced Migration Discussion List which is moderated by the Refugee Studies
Centre (RSC), University of Oxford. It does not necessarily reflect the
views of the RSC or the University. If you re-print, copy, archive or
re-post this message please retain this disclaimer. Quotations or extracts
should include attribution to the original sources.