It’s Not a Refugee Crisis, It’s a Refugee Protection Crisis
The true refugee crisis is not the surge in refugee numbers, but the increasing failure of countries to respect refugee rights.
Refugees Thrive International
Just now·7 min read
By Chris Opila, Board Member, Refugees Thrive International
Refugees Thrive International raises awareness about refugee resilience and funds local organizations in host communities in developing countries to ensure refugees have the protection and support they need to thrive. Learn more here.
June is the month we honor World Refugee Day. It marks an important occasion to pause, think about contemporary conversations about refugees, and reflect on how the dominant narrative about refugees is making it hard to clearly understand the true crisis.
This month, in honor of World Refugee Day, we’re diving into the weeds of international human rights law in solidarity with the refugees who must navigate this refugee protection system as a result of fleeing persecution for who they are or what they believe. We’re also raising funds in honor of World Refugee Day. Refugees Thrive International funds refugee-led organizations like St. Andrew’s Refugee Services in Cairo, Egypt that advance refugee rights and provide refugees with vital services. If you have the means, please donate today. Every contribution helps.
The true refugee crisis is not the surge in refugee numbers, but the increasing failure of countries to respect refugee rights.
Recently, much ink and airtime have been given to the so-called refugee crisis. There is a crisis, but it’s not that more individuals are fleeing their homes. It’s that more countries no longer respect refugee rights or honor the promises that they made to offer refugees protection.
The crisis is not that there are presently more than 30.5 million refugees and asylum seekers (approximately 0.04% of the world’s population) and that number rises every day. The crisis is that every day countries violate and refuse to uphold refugees’ and asylum seekers’ basic rights. Each day, countries prevent refugees from seeking asylum at international borders, deport them back to their home countries, detain them for seeking asylum, and deprive them of education, employment, freedom of movement, and other basic needs.
Right to Non-Refoulement
This right, codified in Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention (which the United States adopted by signing the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees), is the cornerstone of international refugee protection. A refugee gains this right once they leave their home country, even if no country has formally recognized them as a refugee. It requires signatories to the Convention (like the United States) to determine whether an individual on their territory or within their control is a refugee before deporting the individual to any country in which they would be in danger.
Nonetheless, the United States and many other countries routinely violate this right. During World War II, the US refused to allow 907 German Jews to disembark from the M.S. St. Louis, forcing them to return to Europe where many perished in the Holocaust. Now, the United States is expelling asylum seekers from Latin America back into dangerous border towns in Mexico where they are subject to kidnapping and extortion.
Right to Not Be Penalized for Unlawful Entry
This right, codified in Article 31 of the Refugee Convention (to which Australia is a signatory), recognizes that a person compelled to leave their country of origin is rarely in a position to comply with the requirements for lawful entry (e.g., possession of a national passport and visa) into a country of refuge. (Imagine you were fleeing for your life — in a rush and trying to evade notice by a political regime persecuting you — you may not have time or remember to pack each and every necessary document). This right also prevents countries of refuge from manipulating visa regimes to both prevent asylum seekers from lawfully crossing their borders and using unlawful entry as a grounds for deportation (or an excuse to place additional barriers in their path to asylum).
Many of the detention systems that countries have created to incarcerate refugees while their status determination is pending violate this right. These systems exist to deter potential asylum seekers by punishing current asylum seekers.
Australia is the paramount example of this. To reduce the number of asylum seekers unlawfully traveling to Australia on boats from Indonesia, Australia has created a network of offshore detention centers in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, and Manus Island. There, it has detained asylum seekers in filthy conditions for as long as six years while their asylum claims work their way through its immigration system.
Right to Impartial Adjudication of Refugee Status
This right, drawn from Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights rather than the Refugee Convention, recognizes that no right — refugee rights included — exist over the long term without an independent and impartial judiciary.
Sadly, those who adjudicate most asylum claims in the United States are neither independent nor impartial. Immigration judges, unlike normal judges, are employees of the Department of Justice, the same agency that oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutors who contest an asylum seeker’s eligibility for asylum. As Department of Justice employees, they are vulnerable to the whims and caprices of the Attorney General and the political desires of the U.S. president (so much so that their union has called for the creation of independent immigration courts). They do not have the authority to manage their own dockets, are subject to impossibly-high quotas, and are incentivized to deport rather than grant refugee status. Worse, U.S. immigration law allows the Attorney General to review and redecide any decision made by an immmigration judge, a loophole that has been repeatedly weaponized to reduce eligibility for asylum.
Right to Freedom of Movement
This right, codified in Article 26 of the Refugee Convention, cannot be reconciled with refugees’ most common place of residence: a refugee camp. Once a country has recognized an individual as a refugee, it must grant that individual the same freedom of movement that it grants to any other noncitizen. In other words, it cannot confine that individual to a refugee camp and punish them for leaving it, unless it treats all noncitizens in this manner.
Nonetheless, encampment has long been Kenya’s policy for refugees. Under this policy, Kenya requires refugees to reside in either Kakuma Refugee Camp or Dadaab Refugee Camp, both of which are located in remote, arid parts of the country where there are little economic and educational opportunities or social services. When refugees do leave the camps in violation of this policy, they must eke out an existence on the margins of society where their unlawful status makes them vulnerable to extortion, abuse, and arbitrary detention by police.
Right to Employment
This right, arising in Article 6 of the International Covenant for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and Article 17 of the Refugee Convention, is of particular importance for refugees who often must spend their savings to flee their home countries. This right derives from the broader principle, asthat is stated by the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, “the labor market must be open to everyone under [a country’s] jurisdiction.”
Several countries, however, such as Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom restrict refugees’ right to work, particularly while their claims for refugee status are pending. As this process may take years, many refugees run out of savings long before their claim is adjudicated. They are then left with a choice:, renounce their pending refugee claim and return to an unsafe location where they can work or work unlawfully in their country of refuge in unregulated sectors of the economy where they are vulnerable to exploitation.
Right to Education
This right, codified in Article 22 of the Refugee Convention, recognizes the critical role that elementary education plays in childhood development.
Sadly, however, in 2018–2019, only 42 percent of the 660,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon went to school. This situation is a microcosm of regional issues regarding Syrian refugee children’s access to education. In 2016–2017, more than 750,000 Syrian refugee children in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon were not enrolled in school. While public education is free in these countries, many refugee families cannot afford its associated incidental costs like transportation or school supplies. The sheer number of Syrian refugee children who are not in school has prompted some to label them as a lost generation.
World Refugee Day June 2021
We dove into the weeds of international law, and we thank you for following along in solidarity with the refugees who must find themselves navigating this refugee protection system as a result of fleeing persecution for who they are or what they believe.