International Travel Security and the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migration

This article examines the security dimension of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact for Migration and explains how the global compacts expand international cooperation on travel security. Although the Global Compact on Refugees contains relatively few security‐related provisions, many of the Global Compact for Migration's commitments are largely devoted to increasing security by strengthening border controls, improving travel documents, collecting data, using new technologies, like biometrics, and sharing data. By agreeing to increase cooperation on international travel security aimed at reducing irregular migration, migrant origin states have won commitments from migrant destination states to improve conditions for their nationals working abroad. Given that both global compacts are non‐binding and states may take actions to realize some of the compacts’ commitments but not others, the actual consequences of the compacts may vary greatly and lead to unanticipated outcomes.     

Immigration Detention under the Global Compacts in the Light of Refugee and Human Rights Law Standards

The article explores how immigration detention is addressed in the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and investigates the potential implications of the compacts on the existing legal framework regulating the use of immigration detention. While Objective 13 of the GCM largely reflects detention‐related standards under international human rights law, the GCR makes only scarce references to detention in §60. Overall, the compacts risk inhibiting gradual endorsement of the norm of non‐detention of children. On the other hand, they rightly restate the priority for alternatives to detention for adults. States should implement the provisions of the compacts in line with their obligations under international human rights and refugee law. The compacts cannot be used as a pretext to lower domestic detention‐related standards or to diminish the validity of the existing framework governing immigration detention.     

“The GCR and the Role of Development Actors with Refugees: A Game‐Changer,or More of the Same?”

This article considers the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR) in light of the increased role of development actors with refugees. It questions whether the GCR is a “game changer” in how it engages development actors in refugee situations, or more of the status quo, whereby development actors are involved with refugees in ad hoc and indirect ways. The article argues that the GCR is a potential game changer because it initiates changes relating to financial, rhetorical and coordination mechanisms that further engage development actors in refugee situations. While it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the GCR fully, the article highlights examples where progress has been made and identifies other areas for potential progress. The article also underscores challenges, noting that the GCR is not designed to respond to all of these obstacles, and that behaviours engrained in development and humanitarian actors may impede potential progress.     

From Zero to Hero? An analysis of the human rights protections within the Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM)

This article examines the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) from three perspectives: First, while the GCM is not legally binding, the human rights obligations of states which underpin the GCM are. The application of international human rights law to everyone, including migrants, has led to frictions in the inter‐governmental negotiation process, with some states declining to sign the GCM. States cannot relieve themselves of the human rights obligations to which they are already, voluntarily, bound by refusing to sign the GCM. Second, the GCM asserts the human rights of migrants, and by implication condemns state practices contrary thereto, but it also yields to political sensitivities. Thus, we encounter a Compact that defends existing human rights standards, but concurrently submits to political will and tolerates conditions of vulnerability. Third, the GCM’s implementation depends upon, as yet undefined, partnerships with non‐State actors and monitoring against human rights standards.     

Protecting and Benchmarking Migrants’ Rights: An Analysis of the Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was to be “guided by human rights law and standards” in recognition of the rights of international migrants, who are currently protected by an overlapping patchwork of treaties and international law. The GCM contains many laudable commitments that, if implemented, will ensure that states more consistently respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of all migrants and also that states incorporate data on migration into a more cohesive governance regime that does more to promote cooperation on the issue of international migration. However, many concerns remain. Using a legal analysis and cross‐national policy data, we find that the GCM neither fully articulates existing law nor makes use of international consensus to expand the rights of migrants. In its first section, this article provides a concise analysis of the GCM's compliance with a set of core principles of existing international human rights law regarding migrants. In the second section, we apply a novel instrument to create an objective, cross‐national accounting of the laws protecting migrants’ rights in various national legal frameworks. Focusing on a sample of five diverse destination and sending countries, the results suggest we are close to an international consensus on the protection of a core set of migrants’ rights. This analysis should help prioritize the work necessary to implement the GCM.     

Taking older people's rights seriously: the role of international law

Older people face many difficult challenges that amount to a deplorable violation of their basic human rights (poverty, discrimination, denial of social services, etc.). However, the world has been slow to react. Factors that limit global responses to the challenges of aging include: limited political will, the prevalence of neo-liberalism, and NGOs' longstanding advocacy for other seemingly "more" disadvantaged groups. Such oppression of and discrimination against older people require a concerted world-wide response. We contend that the introduction of an international convention on the human rights of older people is most relevant. Reinforced by a potent international monitoring system, the convention should contain comprehensive and legally binding provisions that require participating states to promote older people's rights. It is argued that international law would be a powerful force in defending and protecting older persons, operating as a baseline for establishing underlying values for national aging policies and linking older persons' concerns with other segments of society.     

Taking Older People's Rights Seriously: The Role of International Law

ABSTRACT

Older people face many difficult challenges that amount to a deplorable violation of their basic human rights (poverty, discrimination, denial of social services, etc.). However, the world has been slow to react. Factors that limit global responses to the challenges of aging include: limited political will, the prevalence of neo-liberalism, and NGOs' longstanding advocacy for other seemingly “more” disadvantaged groups. Such oppression of and discrimination against older people require a concerted world-wide response. We contend that the introduction of an international convention on the human rights of older people is most relevant. Reinforced by a potent international monitoring system, the convention should contain comprehensive and legally binding provisions that require participating states to promote older people's rights. It is argued that international law would be a powerful force in defending and protecting older persons, operating as a baseline for establishing underlying values for national aging policies and linking older persons' concerns with other segments of society.     

Policy Space: What,for What,and Where?

This article examines how developing countries can use, and enlarge, existing policy space, without opting out of international commitments. It argues that: (i) a meaningful context for policy space must extend beyond trade policy and include macroeconomic and exchange‐rate policies that will achieve developmental goals more effectively; (ii) policy space depends not only on international rules but also on the impact of international market conditions and policy decisions taken in other countries on the effectiveness of national policy instruments; and (iii) international integration affects policy space through several factors that pull in opposite directions; whether it increases or reduces policy space differs by country and type of integration.     

‘Friends that last a lifetime’: the importance of emotions amongst volunteers working with refugees in Calais

The European ‘refugee crisis’ has generated a broad movement of volunteers offering their time and skills to support refugees across the continent, in the absence of nation states. This article focuses on volunteers who helped in the informal refugee camp in Calais called the ‘Jungle’. It looks at the importance of emotions as a motivating factor for taking on responsibilities that are usually carried out by humanitarian aid organizations. We argue that empathy is not only the initial motivator for action, but it also sustains the voluntary activity as volunteers make sense of their emotions through working in the camp. This type of volunteering has also created new spaces for sociability and community, as volunteers have formed strong emotional and relational bonds with each other and with the refugees. Finally, this article contributes to the growing body of literature that aims at repositioning emotions within the social sciences research to argue that they are an important analytical tool to understand social life and fieldwork.     

From Consultancy to Critique: The ‘Success Story’ of Globalized Zakat Management in Malaysia and its Normative Ambiguities

The administration of Islamic alms (zakat) funds in Malaysia underwent spectacular transformations since the 1990s, shaped by the appropriation of marketized forms of management and a skyrocketing growth of collection and distribution rates. Simultaneously, local zakat funds are increasingly used to pursue targets of sustainable poverty reduction, such as the empowerment of micro-entrepreneurship. This globally inspired ‘success story’ is referred to by various international observers, including development organizations, as a ‘role model’ for other countries to learn from. After illustrating what makes the Malaysian case so particularly attractive, this article develops a critique of international perceptions of this ‘success story’ by making explicit some of its underlying ambiguities. Instead of narrowly celebrating instrumental aspects of business-style organizational innovation and calling for their globalization, a deeper understanding of the discursive embeddedness of Malaysian zakat management would reveal significant normative tensions with secular humanitarian ethics and human rights law, with implications beyond the Malaysian case.     

Children Born of Wartime Rape: Rights and Representations

The ongoing conflict in Darfur has once again served to highlight the threat of sexual violence that women face during times of war. Yet, although sexual violence in wartime has existed probably for as long as war itself, it is only in more recent times that its recognition as a crime under international humanitarian law has taken place. Moreover, although it is recognized that women may conceive as a result of such wartime rape, largely missing from the international rights framework, and from the discourse that surrounds it, is a consideration of the children – or ‘war babies’ – who are born as a result. This article places the focus upon ‘war babies’ by considering the reasons for their current marginalization as a category in international discourse. In addition to examining such marginalization within existing theoretical analyses, this article also analyses the potential for their incorporation within the wider rights framework: first, in terms of international legal practice and; second, in terms of the actions of civil society. The final section concludes.     

In search of making a difference: Mexico in the OECD international development co‐operation architecture

A major challenge for Middle‐Income Countries is to ‘make a difference’ in global issues. The article examines Mexico's compromise in this regard within the OECD international development co‐operation architecture. It highlights some of the footprints of Mexican diplomacy since the OECD membership (1994), through the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, up to the launch of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co‐operation (GPEDC), demonstrating how Mexico gradually increased its profile and responsibilities in specific international negotiation frameworks where its dual nature as donor/recipient is precisely contributing to ‘making a difference’. Suggesting that Mexico could expand its South‐South Co‐operation (SSC) even further, the authors argue that Mexico's quest is constrained by a certain consensus on the predominant development paradigm manifested in the GPEDC.     

DISPARATE IMPACT AND THE QUOTA DEBATES: Law, Labor Market Sociology, and Equal Employment Policies

Bringing sociological theory and research to bear on the "quota debates' dogging discussion of federal civil rights legislation in the early 1990s, this article highlights sociology's role in shaping employment law and shows how apparently technical legal arguments about allocating burdens of proof affect labor market resource allocation among the classes, races, and genders. Contrasting institutional-sociological with liberal-legal concepts of discrimination, the article shows why disparate impact theory has been the most sociological approach to Title VII enforcement. It also shows how disparate impact—a theory and method for establishing legally cognizable employment discrimination injurious to women and minorities—is, and is not, related to affirmative action—a policy encompassing a broad range of procedures intended to provide positive consideration to members of groups discriminated against in the past. Finally, a competing incentive framework is used to show that, although disparate impact creates some incentives for employers to adopt quota hiring, such incentives are counter-balanced by major incentives working against race- and gender-based quotas. Major counterincentives stem from disparate impact itself, from other aspects of equal employment law, and from organizational goals shaping business response to the legal environment.     

Building aid workers’ resilience: why a gendered approach is needed

The concept of resilience is increasingly earning attention in development and humanitarian literature. Agencies and organisations are interested to learn about resilient communities, and keen to support the goal of ‘building resilience’ in developing countries. However, there is comparatively little interest in the resilience of aid workers themselves. This article will discuss the need to support aid workers to build resilience, for their own well-being and also for the effectiveness and sustainability of the essential humanitarian and development work they do. It will advocate for the need of embracing a gender-focused approach in the study of aid workers’ resilience, and more generally, in the study and promotion of aid workers’ well-being. The article draws on a qualitative study which found international women aid workers face specific stressors within the organisations they work for, in working relationships with national staff, and in their personal life. Humanitarian and development organisations need to adopt a gender-focused approach to resilience in the provision of psychosocial support for staff working in development, and emergency relief/humanitarian aid.     

Principles of Protection for Internally Displaced Persons

For forced migrants who have not left their country but are internally displaced persons, human rights law provides an important framework through which to analyse and address their plight. Two principal reasons underpin this assertion.
First, owing to the compelling need: human rights violations cut across all phases of internal displacement, causing its occurrence, characterizing the conditions of physical insecurity and material deprivation in which the internally displaced often find themselves, and impeding equitable and lasting solutions.
Second, as internally displaced persons remain within the territory of their state, refugee law does not apply and, instead, human rights law provides the fundamental basis for addressing their plight. In addition to human rights law, other standards of international law are also relevant, namely international humanitarian law when displacement occurs in situations of armed conflict and refugee law by analogy.
Drawing on these three standards of international law, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement have been developed which set out what protection should mean for internally displaced persons in all phases of displacement. This article traces the origins and provides an overview of the content of the Guiding Principles, the text of which is reproduced in full in the Appendix.     

Diaspora mobilization and the politics of loyalty in the time of Ebola: evidence from the Sierra Leonean diaspora in the UK

Following the recent involvement of overseas diasporas and citizen groups in humanitarian crises, scholars are reconsidering how these groups mobilize and what distinguishes them from formal humanitarian organizations. In this article, I document the individual and collective mobilization of a section of the Sierra Leonean diaspora during the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak. I focus on the individual health‐related communications of Sierra Leoneans living in London, on a specific UK‐based diaspora association called the Kono District Development Association‐UK, and on efforts to coordinate the diaspora. Bolten (2012), and Van Hear and Cohen (2017), show that diasporic mobilization operates through ‘nested scales’ of loyalty to kin, association and nation, and that these different loyalties overlap and conflict. I argue that such overlapping engagements challenge policy orientations to ‘national’ diasporas and offer an alternative model of international humanitarianism.     

Love thy neighbour: Social identity and public support for humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid can be contentious. Should finite national resources be sacrificed to serve the needy abroad? Social identity theorists argue that identification with a superordinate group, in this case the larger world community, should increase individual support for policies such as international humanitarian assistance. However, individuals can simultaneously associate with multiple identities. How does the combination of world and national identities affect support for humanitarian assistance? Using cross‐national survey data, we find evidence that support for international humanitarian aid is highest among those with a strong world identity and weak national identity relative to other identity combinations, though even those with a strong world identity and strong national identity can be supportive of aid.     

Humanitarian Interorganizational Information Exchange Network: How Do Clique Structures Impact Network Effectiveness?

Humanitarian information coordination and sharing continue to challenge the international community. Interorganizational networks are believed to be a way to improve coordination and collaboration among humanitarian organizations. Although researchers have devoted a considerable amount of time exploring the influence of network structure on network performance and effectiveness, little work has been done in the humanitarian relief field. We use the theoretical lens of social network to investigate the relationship between network cliques and network effectiveness. Data were collected through multiple sources among members of GlobalSympoNet, a community of humanitarian organizations engaged in humanitarian information management and exchange. Our findings suggest that, similar to the public health service delivery sector, network effectiveness can be explained by network integration and network cliques in the humanitarian relief field. We discuss these findings and provide some implications of our research in designing interorganizational networks within the humanitarian relief field.     

The law of migrants

While it is acknowledged that international migration law is attracting increased interest, this law merely describes the conditions of admission, sojourn, employment, and exit of migrants, thus amounting in many respects to a restatement of the law of aliens considered in a different perspective. This article concentrates on the humanitarian aspects of migration law, in an attempt to determine the possibility of joint promotion and dissemination of human rights, international humanitarian law, refugee law, law of migrants, and relief law. Refugees are protected by a series of international legal instruments, both universal and regional, which are complemented, if need be, by resolutions of the competent bodies. 2 reasons why the law of migrants deserves to be highlighted and developed are: 1) we have seen that the characteristic aspects of migration are either ignored or only partially taken into account by existing law, and 2) it is important that individuals should be protected in every circumstance. There exists a relatively narrow basis for joint action; since this must be built on points of convergence, a preliminary step consists of identifying this common denominator. The forms which joint action may take can be less structured and reflected in the individual practice of each organization The sine qua non of successful joint action is an awareness of the enterprise's ultimate goal: to assure in every circumstance better protection for human beings, whatever their legal status may be.     

Gender,conflict, and peace-building: how conflict can catalyse positive change for women

Although modern-day armed conflict is horrific for women, recent conflict and post-conflict periods have provided women with new platforms and opportunities to bring about change. The roles of women alter and expand during conflict as they participate in the struggles and take on more economic responsibilities and duties as heads of households. The trauma of the conflict experience also provides an opportunity for women to come together with a common agenda. In some contexts, these changes have led women to become activists, advocating for peace and long-term transformation in their societies. This article explores how women have seized on the opportunities available to them to drive this advocacy forward: including the establishment of an international framework on women, peace, and security that includes United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and other international agreements and commitments to involving women in post-conflict peace-building. The article is based on on-the-ground research and capacity-building activities carried out in the Great Lakes Region of Africa on the integration of international standards on gender equality and women's rights into post-conflict legal systems.