Rethinking international refugee protection
The challenge
There are few greater challenges facing the international community today than how to provide safe, durable and legal solutions for refugees and other forced migrants. This research program examines both the capacity and the limits of existing international legal and institutional frameworks to ensure protection for those who need it. The international protection regime is dynamic and flexible, yet in some respects it has not kept pace with the changing nature of human mobility. The reach of refugee law is deliberately confined, and States have been unwilling to create new legal obligations in this area, including in relation to responsibility-sharing. There is also a growing implementation gap, with many States adopting restrictive approaches that hinder the ability of refugees and other forced migrants to access existing protection under international law. Yet, at the same time, developments in human rights law have had the effect of widening the class of people whom States must not remove. With increasing numbers of people on the move, how can the international protection regime best respond to the needs of the world’s displaced people?
Project highlights
Our work is at the forefront of international scholarly debates and policy discussions about the future of the international protection regime. Our research challenges orthodox assumptions about the origins of international protection and key legal concepts.
Professor Jane McAdam and Professor Guy S Goodwin-Gill are internationally recognised as intellectual pioneers in the field of international refugee law. Their book, The Refugee in International Law, now in its fourth edition (with the assistance of Dr Emma Dunlop) has been described as ‘among the most important volumes on the subject in a generation’. Their advice is sought by global leaders and institutions, and their authoritative work has been cited by courts and tribunals around the world.
Our research is effective in promoting law reform and improving the protection of people seeking safety. For instance, Professor McAdam’s trail-blazing scholarship on complementary protection, opens in a new window was instrumental in achieving major law reform in Australia, with 2012 legislation prohibiting the government from removing people at risk of torture; cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; the death penalty; or arbitrary deprivation of life.
Our work
Our research reassesses conventional assumptions, critically evaluates existing approaches, connects the dots between fragmented policy areas, and considers how to maintain fundamental legal protection principles while devising better ways of delivering them.
For instance, what should durable solutions look like in a world where mobility, transnationalism and knowledge exchange occur more easily than ever before, and where refugees are often caught up in more general migratory movements?
Do discrete legal and empirical categories sharpen our understandings of people’s needs and create more nuanced solutions, or is a more holistic approach required?
How are international legal and institutional frameworks interpreted and implemented by States, and how do we counteract the spread of increasingly restrictive domestic asylum policies around the globe?
By combining comparative, historical and legal analysis with strong doctrinal and theoretical foundations, we tackle the cutting-edge issues in a considered and contextual way.
