Welcome To Our Website
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees has been called the Magna Carta of international refugee law and it has served as “the cornerstone of protection” for millions upon millions of people, since it was first adopted on the 28th of July 1951, and entered in force on 22nd of April 1954. This year, 2011, marks an important milestone for the 1951 Convention, its 60th anniversary. This year also marks another important milestone, the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Such important historic markers for these two international refugee and statelessness rights instruments call for some serious reflection and thought on these seminal international instruments.
Following our highly successful 2008 Critical Issues in International Refugee Law Research Workshop (please see www.yorku.ca/ciirl/2008), the second Critical Issues in International Refugee Law Research Workshop seeks to bring together distinguished Superior and High Court judges and leading legal scholars in the field from around the world, as well as senior government and intergovernmental officials, including UNHCR officials, and others to York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Tuesday, April 26th, and Wednesday, April 27th, in order to examine and to study in depth four critical issues in international refugee law. [read more ]
The four critical legal issues that will be examined on this occasion include the following: in keeping with one of the central purposes of this year's international Research Workshop, the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Convention and the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the expert participants at the international Research Workshop will consider the future of international protection for those who are stateless and/or those who have a well-founded fear of persecution, refugees. Stateless persons can be, of course, refugees and the state of refugeehood can, perforce, result in a condition of statelessness. Given the apparent overlap between refugees and stateless persons, perhaps the pressing legal issue here is, then, can these two public international law systems be integrated within a single status determination system, that is, for both refugees and stateless persons?
The second critical legal issue under examination is the interface between "soft law" and "hard law." The interface between "soft law" and "hard law" addresses the issue of how refugee law decision-makers' judgements are impacted by such things as the UNHCR's guidelines, Executive Committee (ExCom) Conclusions, its Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status. In short, how does "soft law" affect refugee law decision-makers' judgements in cases involving Convention refugee status and/or complementary or subsidiary protection and how does this, in turn, shape the formulation of "hard law?"
The third critical legal issue is the intersection of international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international refugee law. For instance, the exclusion of those who are responsible for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity from Convention refugee status under Article 1F(a) of the 1951 Convention are well known. The legal issues under examination here are how international humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict and international criminal law, particularly, since the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has affected international refugee law and, especially, the application and interpretation of Article 1F, whether under Article 1F(a), (b) or (c), in claims for refugee protection and/or under other exclusion clauses such as those for subsidiary protection.
The fourth critical legal issue of concern is the developing and evolving "security concerns and special procedures" involving those who are deemed to be threats to a State's national security. The significance of these issues in the present state of the world is self-evident, given the securitization of the liberal state following the horrific events of 9/11. Hence, this critical legal issue area, that has come to the fore since September 11, 2001, addresses the security and related special procedures that have been introduced over the last decade. How has the preoccupation with security concerns and special procedures affected international refugee law and refugee protection?
These are all significant areas of concern in not only international refugee law, but, public international law, more generally, as well as within public policy and, specifically, refugee policy, as an example. The overriding objective of our second Critical Issues in International Refugee Law Research Workshop, like our first, will be not only to explore and to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, a number of critical issues in international refugee law but also to identify key points or areas of international refugee law that require further development and research. In doing so, we hope to advance international protection to all those who are seeking refuge from persecution and the vile degradation of their human dignity, including, the denial of their fundamental equal human right to a nationality and citizenship.
