Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill speaks on challenges for refugee protection and assistance in the 21st century

  Keynote Address: Refugees – Challenges for Protection and Assistance in the 21st Century

Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, a member of the Kaldor Centre's Advisory Committee, gave an address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Ad Hoc Committee on Large Scale Arrivals of Refugees to Turkey on the 14 June 2015.

It is now nearly 100 years since the League of Nations appointed the first High Commissionerfor Refugees, and that the modern story of international refugee law and organization began. We have come a long way since then. Millions have been displaced by conflict and persecution, and millions have found protection and either a solution in another land, or the opportunity to return in safety to their own country.

We have seen institutional progress, too, with successive ad hoc and temporary mechanisms finally leading to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees being placed on a permanent footing, established now within the UN ‘until the refugee problem is solved’.

And from the first hesitant steps to agree on an identity certificate for refugees, we have seen States sign on to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees – 147 being party to one or the other or both – and witnessed States’ increasing participation in the work of the UNHCR Executive Committee, which now comprises 98 Members.

At one level, the refugee regime is thus truly international, linking the plight of refugees, which no State should have to carry alone, to a solid body of legal rules and principles and to a forum for discussion, debate and decision with, in principle, all the potential of a cooperative, supportive collective response.

This does not mean, though, that it is sufficiently representative – the refugee voice is often unheard – or that the system is sufficiently effective and accountable, whether at the national or international level. The number of protracted refugee situations around the world is evidence enough of that. Moreover, serious flaws remain in the overall scheme, which international law alone cannot remedy, and it may be that the regime is facing its most serious challenges ever.

Thirty years ago, as refugees continued to flee Indo-China, Central America, and Africa, the UN General Assembly endorsed the Governmental Experts’ report on international cooperation to avert new flows of refugees. As a result, the UN itself is now better placed and better organized to anticipate crisis and to coordinate the efforts of its various agencies, but its capacity to deal with causes, to make peace, and to develop and implement lasting solutions is seemingly as marginal as ever.

In situations of mass displacement, the international community relies still on individual States to shoulder primary responsibility, to abide by international law and to take on the costs entailed by fulfilling that powerful principle of humanity which lies at the heart of protection: non-refoulement – by which States have committed themselves not to send anyone to a country in which they may be at risk of persecution or serious harm.

Speaking in the UNHCR Executive Committee in 1987, the Turkish representative made a point which is still worth recalling:

‘The principle of non-refoulement’, he said, ‘had to be scrupulously observed. Nevertheless, ... countries of first asylum or transit ..., faced with the difficulties of repatriation and the progressively more restrictive practices of host countries, might find themselves unable to continue bearing the burden and, for want of any other solution, come to regard refoulement as the only possible way out. If that should occur, they would not be the only ones at fault, since the responsibility for ensuring the conditions necessary for observance of the non-refoulement principle rested with the international community as a whole.’

Much the same had been said at the 1951 Conference in Geneva, when the Convention was debated and adopted. Such reality checks are certainly helpful from time to time, although the international lawyer may prefer to recall J. L. Brierly’s observation that ‘order and not chaos is the governing principle of the world’ in which we have to live...

Nevertheless, the lack of sufficient, concrete cooperation among States continues to hamper the search for humane solutions, while the absence of any evident sense of obligation limits the capacity for productive thought and meaningful action. Simplistic preconceptions about sovereignty, migration, and responsibility can and do lead States into policy positions that are unrealistic and unrealisable – a sort of wishful humanitarian thinking, hoping against hope that perhaps the refugees won’t come, and if they do, that they won’t stay long... Read the full speech.