GPPi participates in workshop on transnational law enforcement

GPPi Research Associate Julian Lehmann gave a presentation at a workshop on transnational law enforcement and migration control, held from 9 – 10 December 2013 at the Danish Institute for Human Rights in Copenhagen. He discussed the transfer of state activities to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), such as the determination of refugee status, but also the provision of welfare, education and health services.

Lehmann argued that international law ideally requires that refugees in states of asylum receive protection by actors accountable under international law, which makes the transfer of activities to UNHCR raise issues of legal compliance. However, the transfer of activities is also a reaction to real needs for real people in states that do not want or cannot fulfill their obligations towards refugees.

UNHCR has reacted to this quandary by developing core standards for countries of asylum. Such core standards run the risk of carving out refugee protection if they are used by other states to reject asylum seekers said to have found ​“protection” elsewhere. But from the point of view of UNHCR, core standards are a natural reaction to political and strategic dilemmas about what standards the agency should prioritize, and what it can trade.

The workshop was part of a wider series of events organized by the research network program ​“Globalisation and Transnational Human Rights Obligations.” Issues concerned questions of extraterritorial jurisdiction, shared responsibility of multiple actors, and responsibility of actors other than states. Co-organized by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the University of Antwerpen, Aarhus University and the European University Institute, the workshop brought together scholars and doctoral students from Austria, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.