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This is the fourth post in an on-going series on Refugee Law, following what I’m learning in Refugee Law with Dr Michelle Foster. To read the full series go here.

A critical part of coming within the Convention definition is satisfying that the person is being persecuted for one of the enumerated reasons. International law doesn’t provide us with a definition of persecution, the framers of the Convention rightly thought that it would dangerous to limit persecution when we know how imaginatively evil humankind can be, so decision makers have often had to decide for themselves what persecution actually means, which has lead to some problems.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

This is the third post in an on-going series on Refugee Law, following what I’m learning in Refugee Law with Dr Michelle Foster. To read the full series go here.

This week in Refugee Law we learnt about what the three stage process is for refugees who are applying for asylum in Australia. First, there’s what is the determination by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (formally DIMIA now DIC); then if they aren’t successful the refugee can generally appeal that decision to the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT); and if they still aren’t happy with that outcome there is the final avenue of judicial review.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

This is the second post in an on-going series on Refugee Law, following what I’m learning in Refugee Law with Dr Michelle Foster. To read the full series go here.

So thanks to the Starbucks detour I haven’t been able to Law-blog for a week. Here’s what was going to go up last week. For a fantastic overview of the state of international refugee law I have to recommend James Hathaway’s recent article, Why Refugee Law Still Matters, in the Melbourne Journal of International Law. It’s easy reading and provides a good introduction to some of the issues of refugees and recommendations for both sides. It’s main strength is clearing up some the rhetoric around refugee issues, including how refugees are defined.

So, how do we know if someone is a refugee? There are a few definitions out there but the most accepted one is from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees art 2 of which defines refugees as someone who is persecuted “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”, and has left their country. Originally the Convention only covered events occurring before 1951 in Europe but subsequent Protocol got rid of those limitations. The second bit of the test is important because it effectively removes the 25 million internally displaced people from the purvey of the Convention. Though the Convention is one of the most widely accepted treaties in the world, and the words appear relatively clear, obviously there has been and is a lot of debate over exactly what they mean. The Convention was formulated after World War II so there’s a lot of historical and political reasons for it’s requirements and modern interpretation has had to significantly expand the range of meaning of some of the words used to encapsulate currently recognised persecuted groups. For example, woman and children are now recognised as “social groups” by many nations for the purposes of the Convention and thus can be considered refugees.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

This is the first post in an on-going series on Refugee Law, following what I’m learning in Refugee Law with Dr Michelle Foster. To read the full series go here.

To start my blog series on Refugee Law here are some statistics to set the scene for us.

In 2006 the total number of refugees was 8.4 million
Estimated number of internally displaced people in 2005: 23.7 million

The Top 10 origin countries for refugees were (the top 3 places they went are in brackets):

• Afghanistan: 1.9 million (Pakistan, Iran, Germany)
• Sudan: 693,300 (Chad, Uganda, Kenya)
• Burundi: 438,700 (Tanzania, Congo, Rwanda)
• Democratic Republic of Congo: 430,600 (Tanzania, Zambia, Congo)
• Somalia: 394,800 (Kenya, Yemen, UK)
• Vietnam: 358,200 (China, Germany, USA)
• Palestinians: 349,700 (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq)
• Iraq: 262,100 (Iran, Germany, Netherlands)
• Azerbaijan: 233,700 (Armenia, Germany, USA)
• Liberia: 231,100 (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire)

As the stats above show, refugee flows are intensely regional and most refugees stay in the Majority World. This flies in the face of the some of the political arguments of the “floods” of refugees waiting to enter Australia. Interestingly, even the Congo produced over 430,000 refugees in 2006 people from Burundi still sought asylum there.

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Popularity: 6% [?]