LES DÉPLACÉS DES CHAGOS. RETOUR SUR LA LUTTE DE CES HABITANTS POUR RÉCUPÉRER LEUR TERRE ANCESTRALE BY Caecilia Alexandre & Konstantia Koutouki

In the most recent edition of the Quebec Journal of International Law (La Revue québécoise de droit international), the QJIL published an article entitled "LES DÉPLACÉS DES CHA GOS . RETOUR SUR LA LUTTE  DE  CES HABITANTS  POUR RÉCUPÉRER LEUR  TERRE  ANCESTRALE" and written by Caecilia Alexandre & Professor Konstantia Koutouki. The following is the English abstract of the article:

This article gives us a complete overview of the little known story of the Chagos archipelago, a story which is vital to the understanding of why the former inhabitants of the archipelago are fighting so vigorously to return home following the installation of an Anglo-American military base on one of the archipelago’s islands, Diego Garcia and why their right to return is well-founded under national and international legal principles. This article also discusses the political context of the installation of the military base and how this impacts the options the Chagossians have on national and international levels to defend their rights.      

Sponsors are doing more while the Canadian government does less

A drowned boy has angered the world. In Canada this is mingled with the particular knowledge that an effort to sponsor the Kurdi family to Canada failed. As Canadians we wish more had been done and want to do more. Everyone is talking about sponsoring refugees. We are reminded in the media that this is the Canadian way. If this moment of realization brings more Canadians into the sponsorship community, this is cause for hope and increased protection. But individual Canadians do not, and should not, bear the weight of responsibility here.

Responsibility lies with the Canadian government and while individual Canadians have already been doing more, the government is increasingly doing less.

Canada, like other countries, offers a government resettlement program that brings refugees to Canada. This is in contrast to refugees arriving in Canada on their own and claiming asylum. Resettlement is a means of recognizing that not all refugees can cross borders to safety, and that certain parts of the world face greater refugee flows than others. In Canada, we are particularly far away and hard to get to. The Syrian refugees now flooding into Europe by the thousands highlight just how far Canada is from this crisis.

Private sponsorship, unique to Canada, was created almost 40 years ago as a complement to the Canadian government program of refugee resettlement. Sponsors use the term “additionality” and a statement by the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association on September 4, 2015 concluded, “All private sponsorships should be in addition to the Government’s commitment.” Yet it seems that the Canadian government has forgotten this concept of additionality over the last 5 years.

In 2010, the government announced an increase to Canada’s resettlement program of up to 2,500 spaces per year. A cause for celebration, except that only 500 spots were government and 2,000 were private sponsorship. For the numbers to be realized, sponsors would be responsible for 80% of the increase and costs. With the 2012 Budget, the government shifted 1,000 refugee spaces from the government program to private sponsors. In 2013, the government announced an initial commitment to resettle 1,300 Syrian refugees by the end of 2014. This number included a mere 200 government spots with the remaining 1,100 refugees expected to arrive through private sponsorship. The private sponsorship commitment, made on behalf of sponsors by the Canadian government, was the 5th largest confirmed pledge for the admission of Syrian refugees received by UNHCR by June 2014. The Canadian government promise meanwhile ranked 10th. While the government can increase quotas and announce grand expansions, with the numbers allocated to private sponsorship, it remains up to individual Canadians to voluntarily take on the personal and financial responsibility to bring the refugees to Canada

The current government promise to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees is not a new response. This number was announced back in January, is spread out over 3 years, and once again put 60% of the responsibility on private sponsors. A further campaign pledge of 10,000 refugees “from the region” was made in early August and new promises are now being made. While this will bring some Syrians to safety in Canada, the arrivals will remain the result of private efforts and not an engaged government response.

As the government asks sponsors to shoulder more responsibility for resettlement, one would assume they are making sponsorship easier. And yet the opposite is true. A 2011 change that limits eligibility for certain sponsorships to refugees recognized by UNHCR or a state reportedly stymied the Kurdi family. This sort of recognition is a practical impossibility for UNHCR in mass flow populations such as Syrians. The government also introduced caps on submissions in 2011 and 2012 rather than increased resources to address an application backlog. Essentially, sponsors want to resettle too many people.

When the government cut refugee health care in 2012, it reduced the care for privately sponsored refugees to urgent or essential services only while refugees resettled by the government retained extended coverage. Even following a successful challenge of the health care cuts in federal court, interim measures introduced by the government still offer less health coverage to privately sponsored refugees than to the refugees resettled by the government.

Private sponsorship is an incredible tool for Canadians to offer protection to refugees in need. The private response should be a powerful signal to the government to do more. Instead the government asks more and offers less. Rather than additionality, sponsors face the reality that if they don’t act, fewer refugees will arrive in Canada. So, please, gather your friends and start sponsoring, but demand of our government that they too do more.

Robert Barsky's New Book - Undocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law: The Flight and the Plight of People Deemed 'Illegal'

Routledge is publishing Robert Barksy's new book, Undocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law: The Flight and the Plight of People Deemed 'Illegal'. The following is the description from Routledge's website:

This book describes the experiences of undocumented migrants, all around the world, bringing to life the challenges they face from the moment they consider leaving their country of origin, until the time they are deported back to it. Drawing on a broad array of academic studies, including law, interpretation and translation studies, border studies, human rights, communication, critical discourse analysis and sociology, Robert Barsky argues that the arrays of actions that are taken against undocumented migrants are often arbitrary, and exercised by an array of officials who can and do exercise considerable discretion, both positive and negative. 

Employing insights from a decade-long research project, Barsky also finds that every stop along the migrant’s pathway into, and inside of, the host country is strewn with language issues, relating to intercultural communication, interpretation, gossip, hearsay, and the challenges of peddling of linguistic wares in the social discourse marketplace. These language issues are almost always impediments to anodyne or productive interactions with host country officials, particularly on the "front-lines" where migrants encounter border patrol and law enforcement officers without adequate means of communicating their situation or understanding their rights. Since undocumented people are categorized as ‘illegal’, they can be subjected to abuse and exploitation by host country officials, who can choose to either tolerate or punish them on the basis of unpredictable, changeable, and even illusory or "arbitrary" laws and regulations. 

Citing experts at every level of the undocumented immigrant apparatuses worldwide, from public defenders to interpreters, Barsky concludes that the only viable policy to address prevailing abuses and inequalities is to move towards open borders, an approach that would address prevailing issues and, surprisingly, provide security and economic benefits to both host and home countries.

A short excerpt from the introduction to the book may be viewed here.

"Human Rights, Climate Change, and Cross-Border Displacement" by Jane McAdam and Marc Limon

A new policy report has been published by the Universal Rights Group and was written by Jane McAdam and Marc Limon.

The report is entitled: "Human Rights, Climate Change, and Cross-Border Displacement: The Role of the International Human Rights Community in Contributing to Effective and Just Solutions." It is available here.

The following is a brief description which also available here:

The links between climate change and human rights are more widely accepted than ever before. The Human Rights Council has adopted a series of resolutions calling attention to the effects of climate change on the full enjoyment of human rights, and the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC has also recognised that ‘the adverse effects of climate change have a range of direct and indirect implications for the effective enjoyment of human rights.’ While climate change impacts have implications for the human rights of individuals in all parts of the world, it is well established that the rights of those in already vulnerable situations are at particular risk. As sea levels rise and extreme weather events increase in frequency and magnitude, more and more people in such situations are expected to be displaced by disasters, some of them across international borders.

And yet, despite a growing recognition of the human rights implications of climate change, including in the context of human displacement, and despite an understanding that adherence to international human rights commitments and principles can help to strengthen policymaking in response to global warming, relatively few concrete steps have been taken to bring a human rights perspective to climate negotiations. Likewise, beyond expressing concern about a possible human rights protection gap for the increasing number of people who are expected to be displaced across borders in the context of climate change, the international community has not done enough to consider how to fill that gap. This Policy Report is an important step towards clarifying what UN bodies can and should do to begin to safeguard human rights against the effects of climate change, including in the context of human displacement.

New Issue of Refuge on Making Homes and Forced Migration

Refuge published a new issue in April 2015 dedicated to the theme of home-making and displacement.  The full issue can be found here. The abstract to the introductory chapter written by  Cathrine Brun and Anita Fábos and entitled "Making Homes in Limbo? A Conceptual Framework" is as follows:

This article aims to conceptualize home and homemaking for people in protracted displacement. The article serves three purposes: to present an overview of the area of inquiry; to develop an analytical framework for under- standing home and homemaking for forced migrants in protracted displacement; and to introduce the special issue. It explores how protracted displacement has been defined—from policy definitions to people’s experiences of protractedness, including “waiting” and “the permanence of temporariness.” The article identifies the ambivalence embedded in experiences and practices of homemaking in long-term displacement, demonstrating how static notions of home and displacement might be unsettled. It achieves this through examining relationships between mobility and stasis, the material and symbolic, between the past, present, and future, and multiple places and scales. The article proposes a conceptual framework—a triadic constellation of home—that enables an analysis of home in different contexts of protracted displacement. The framework helps to explore home both as an idea and a practice, distinguishing among three elements: “home” as the day-to-day practices of homemaking, “Home” as representing values, traditions, memories, and feelings of home, and the broader political and historical contexts in which “HOME” is understood in the current global order and embedded in institutions. In conclusion, the article argues that a feminist and dynamic understanding of home-Home-HOME provides a more holistic perspective of making home in protracted displacement that promotes a more extensive and more sophisticated academic work, policies, and practices.

The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States by Drs. Walter Ewing, Daniel Martinez and Ruben Rumbaut

The American Immigration Council recently published a report entitled: "The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States" written by Drs. Walter Ewing, Daniel Martinez and Ruben Rumbaut. 

The report can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/13822850/The_Criminalization_of_Immigration_in_the_United_States

The following is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term. For this reason, harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime.

Unfortunately, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats. Whole new classes of “felonies” have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical. In short, immigrants themselves are being criminalized.

"The Endriago Subject and the Dislocation of State Attribution in Human Rights Discourse: The Case of Mexican Asylum Claims in Canada" by Ariadna Estévez

Third World Quarterly has recently published "The Endriago Subject and the Dislocation of State Attribution in Human Rights Discourse: The Case of Mexican Asylum Claims in Canada" by Ariadna Estévez. It is available here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CTwZYHGXjJ6FwVtTcRDX/full#.VZg6cOdzdW0

The following is the abstract:

Mexico is arguably immersed in an unprecedented wave of violence in which drug cartels and law enforcement officials at times work together in cases of forced disappearance, kidnapping, execution, torture, persecution and other atrocities considered violations of the most basic human rights, including the right to life and to physical integrity. However, these atrocities are only classified as human rights violations if they can be unequivocally attributed to the state; this is not always possible. Using Foucault’s idea of governmentality and Valencia’s concept of the Endriago as a subjectivity emerging from the specific governmentalisation of the Mexican state, this article examines how hybrid agents in Mexico – law enforcement officials working for criminal gangs or criminals working for the state – serve to subvert common understandings of attribution and responsibility in the state-centric discourse of human rights in general, and of the right of asylum in the specific case of Canada, a country to which thousands of Mexicans have fled.