Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the International Context – Rights and Realities
- 1 The Rule of Law and the Role of Law: Refugees and Asylum Seekers
- 2 Asylum and the Rule of Law in Canada: Hearing the Other (Side)
- 3 Refugees, Asylum and the Rule of Law in the USA
- 4 The Australian Story: Asylum Seekers outside the Law
- 5 The Intersection between the International, the Regional and the Domestic: Seeking Asylum in the UK
- 6 Conclusions on the Rule of Law
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the International Context – Rights and Realities
- 1 The Rule of Law and the Role of Law: Refugees and Asylum Seekers
- 2 Asylum and the Rule of Law in Canada: Hearing the Other (Side)
- 3 Refugees, Asylum and the Rule of Law in the USA
- 4 The Australian Story: Asylum Seekers outside the Law
- 5 The Intersection between the International, the Regional and the Domestic: Seeking Asylum in the UK
- 6 Conclusions on the Rule of Law
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The ‘Rule of Law’ is a sophisticated constitutional principle, crucial in many countries to the proper demarcation of the roles of national parliaments, the judiciary, and the executive structures. It is also, more broadly, a notion at the heart of national debates around certain of the more complex, multilateral issues confronting our modern world – terrorism, transnational crime, irregular migration and asylum among them.
If its importance is undisputed, in the experience of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) its nuances and permutations are nevertheless many. In some of the societies where we work, conflict or human rights violations have rendered the rule of law very relative, to a point where the machinery of protection and of justice have lost their legitimacy, if they continue to exist at all. The rule of law has painstakingly to be reconstructed, institution by institution, law by law, capacity by capacity. In certain other more developed societies, particularly where security is driving the operation of asylum systems, the rights of refugees are moving to the periphery of the rule of law notion. International law standards may be applied very inconsistently within and between countries; arbitrary detention, not subject to judicial review, is leaving many asylum seekers in a sort of legal limbo; and the world of borders can be particularly immune – with interception, turnarounds and refoulement taking place outside the frame of proper scrutiny.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the Rule of LawComparative Perspectives, pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009