International Refugee Law

Objectives:
A participant who has successfully completed this course should have a clear understanding of:

• the conventional and customary law obligations of States in respect of refugees and other asylum-seekers and of the rights of applicants
• the protection mechanisms, both national and international, that operate for the immediate and long-term protection of refuge-seekers and the policy considerations that affect contemporary State attitudes to such groups
• the legal problems affecting national interpretations and application of refugee concepts, with particular emphasis on definitional problems, status determination procedures and non-refoulement.

Content:
The course will focus mainly on the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol, supplemented by additional materials that assist in the interpretation, construction and critique of these instruments. Particular attention will be paid to national implementation of refugee protection and status determination procedures in Australia, comparing and contrasting the approach taken, where appropriate, with that of other nations.

Addressed will be the origins of the international system of protection, its limitations and deficiencies; the role and relevance of UNHCR; definitional problems; exclusion and cessation of refugee status; core concepts of protection (including complementary protection), asylum, non-refoulement, penalization and refugee rights; asylum, temporary refuge, temporary protection and burden-sharing; durable solutions; protracted refugee situations; status determination procedures; detention; ‘deflection' techniques; other categories such as ‘environmental' refugees and internally displaced persons; and a consideration of possible future directions for refugee law.

The broad purpose of the course is to examine the international mechanisms and norms that have been developed for the protection of refugees, and the reciprocal interaction between these mechanisms and norms and national policies. As refugee law exists to address a specific humanitarian need, students will be expected to consider critically the law's effectiveness in managing the global refugee situation, the protection needs of refugees, and the impact on national societies.

Consequently a participant who has successfully completed this course should:

(i) be conversant with the substance of the legal norms that govern the international protection system for refugees, the rights international law bestows upon them and the obligations of States in this area;

(ii) have acquired a familiarity with the legal problems caused by definitional and operational issues under the provisions of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees; and

(iii) be able to discuss and debate the various policy issues raised by the implementation of international and domestic protection systems in light of contemporary circumstances.

Students must rely on the Approved Assessment which will be posted to the course homepage on the ANU Law website, prior to the commencement of the course.

26 Contact Hours (Intensive Delivery)

Click here for 2009 Graduate Law Timetable

International human rights law.

Goodwin Gill and McAdam, Introduction and Chapter 1.

Loescher, 'The Origins of the International Refugee Regime' in Beyond Charity: International Operation and the Global Refugee Crisis (OUP, 1993), 32-55.