Immigration Detention through the Lens of International Human Rights: Lessons from South America
Global Detention Project Working Paper No. 23
By Pablo Ceriani Cernadas
September 2017

South America has not witnessed the same growth in immigration detention systems that has occurred elsewhere. This Global Detention Project Working Paper discusses developments across the region through the lens of international human rights standards to argue that while the failure of many Latin American countries to implement aggressive detention regimes may appear to be anomalous, this helps underscore how detention has become legitimated across the globe as a tool to respond to the complex phenomenon of irregular migration. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Ceriani-Cernadas-GDP-working-paper.pdf


ACCESSING ASYLUM IN EUROPE
Extraterritorial Border Controls and Refugee Rights under EU Law
By Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax

SYNOPSIS:
Europe is currently experiencing a "refugee crisis", demonstrated by millions of displaced people unseen since World War II. This book examines the interface between the EU's response to irregular flows, in particular the main extraterritorial border and migration controls taken by the Member States, and the rights asylum seekers acquire from EU law. 
    "Remote control" techniques, such as the imposition of visas, fines on carriers transporting unsatisfactorily documented third-country nationals, and interception at sea are investigated in detail in a bid to assess the impact these measures have on access to asylum in the EU. The book also thoroughly analyses the rights recognised by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to persons in need of international protection, inclusive of the principle of non-refoulement, the right to leave any country including one's own, the right to asylum, and the right to remedies and effective judicial protection. 
    The fundamental focus of the book is the relationship between the aforementioned border and migration controls and the rights of asylum seekers and, most importantly, how these rights (should) limit the scope of such measures and the ways in which they are implemented. The ultimate goal is to conclude whether the current series of extraterritorial mechanisms of pre-entry vetting is compatible in EU law with the EU rights of forced migrants.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/accessing-asylum-in-europe-9780198701002?cc=gb&lang=en&# 


New special issue of African Human Mobility Review (AHMR) - edited by Prof Jonathan Crush and published by the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) - is now available and can be downloaded at: http://sihma.org.za/online_journal/ahmr-vol-3-no2-may-august-2017/ 
 
Articles include:  
·	Benign Neglect or Active Destruction? A Critical Analysis of Refugee and Informal Sector Policy and Practice in South Africa
·	Refugee Entrepreneurial Economies in Urban South Africa 
·	Comparing Refugee and South African Migrant Enterprise in the Urban Informal Sector 
·	Security Risk and Xenophobia in the Urban Informal Sector 
·	The Owners of Xenophobia: Zimbabwean Informal Enterprise and Xenophobic Violence in South Africa
·	Linking Harare and Johannesburg through Informal Cross-Border Entrepreneurship 
·	Informal Entrepreneurship and Cross-Border Trade between Mozambique and South Africa
 
AHMR is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed on-line journal created to encourage and facilitate the study of all aspects (socio-economic, political, legislative and developmental) of Human Mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the publication of original research, policy discussions and evidence research papers AHMR provides a comprehensive forum devoted exclusively to the analysis of contemporaneous trends, migration patterns and some of the most important migration and refugee related issues. AHMR welcomes manuscripts on the various aspects of human mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you have any queries or you want to submit an article, please contact the editor Dr Mulugeta Dinbabo [log in to unmask]   


From Non-Interference to Non-Indifference: The African Union and the Responsibility to Protect
http://www.refugee-rights.org/Publications/Papers/2017/AU%20&%20R2P%20-%20final.pdf 

A new report from the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) on the African Union and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), exploring how this principle has taken root within the continental union, in the form of non-indifference.

The internationally agreed principle of R2P provides that states are primarily responsible for protecting their populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing and should assist each other to that end, but also entails that, if a state fails to do so, the international community will respond, if necessary through coercive action.
    R2P has gradually been introduced on the African continent. The Organisation of African Union (OAU) had no legal power to get involved in internal conflicts and was largely inactive on this front. Its successor, the African Union (AU), has been granted the right to intervene in a member state in respect of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, following a decision by the assembly of heads and state, or when members request intervention to restore peace and security. Those provisions in the AU Constitutive Act have together been termed “non-indifference” and may be viewed as the African analogue of R2P.
    This new paper provides background on the principle of R2P and on the relevant legal and institutional frameworks of the OAU and the AU. The AU’s right to intervene, coupled with a new prominence to human rights, led to the creation of an elaborate institutional framework to implement the AU’s role on peace and security, most importantly the AU Peace and Security Council.
    The paper also analyses different cases of intervention under the OAU and the AU. It analyses the challenges for the AU in implementing R2P in the form of non-indifference. 
    Based on the report’s conclusions, IRRI recommends to the AU to increase efforts, individually and collectively, to protect populations against international crimes, by more pro-active conflict prevention efforts, effective intervention in crises and the adoption of sanctions, if necessary. The AU should clarify its relationship to the UN, commit financial resources and come up with a framework for decision-making. This requires qualitative assistance by the African Commission and should receive adequate support from donors.


The Refugee Law Initiative has recently published three new pieces on our RLI blog that may be of interest.

The first, ‘Rescue operations in the Mediterranean and the intra-European distribution of responsibility for refugees’ (https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/08/22/rescue-operations-in-the-mediterranean-and-the-intra-european-distribution-of-responsibility-for-refugees/ ), is written by RLI Research Affiliate Dr Dana Schmalz (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity), and addresses the interconnection between rescue operations in the Mediterranean and burden-sharing in the EU context. Dr Schmalz argues that "there will be no genuine institutional response to the tragedies in the Mediterranean without a comprehensive and just approach to the quest of intra-European solidarity and cooperation".
  The second piece, entitled ‘How should the East Asian countries respond to a potential exodus of North Koreans in the case of a Korean peninsula crisis?’ (https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/08/30/how-should-the-east-asian-countries-respond-to-a-potential-exodus-of-north-koreans-in-case-of-a-korean-peninsula-crisis/ ), is by RLI Research Affiliate Naoko Hashimoto (University of Sussex). In her discussion, she outlines the legal obligations of two separate scenarios: one in which Kim Jong-un remains in power even after a military clash; the other in which a regime change occurs following a clash.
  The third piece, 'Statelessness and the global compact for migration' by Tendayi Bloom (The Open University), contains 14 considerations for the global compact for migration that relate to stateless persons. https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/09/11/statelessness-and-the-global-compact-for-migration/

The RLI blog is a platform to publish content from our networks and students in a conversational and informal setting. We welcome comments and contributions to the blog - see here for guidelines https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/contribute/

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