The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law is a comprehensive, critical work, which analyses the state of research across the refugee law regime as a whole. Drawing together leading and emerging scholars, the Handbook provides both doctrinal and theoretical analyses of international refugee law and practice. It critiques existing law from a variety of normative positions, with several chapters identifying foundational flaws that open up space for radical rethinking. Many authors work directly in the field, and their contributions demonstrate how scholarship and practice can mutually inform each other. Contributions assess a wide range of international legal instruments relevant to refugee protection, including from international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international migration law, the law of the sea, and international and transnational criminal law. Geographically, contributors examine regional and domestic laws and practices from around the world, with 10 chapters focused on specific regions. This Handbook provides an account, as well as a critique, of the status quo, and in so doing it sets the agenda for future academic research in international refugee law.

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are persons who have been forced to leave their places of residence as a result of armed conflict, violence, human rights violations, or natural or human-made disasters, but who have not crossed an international border. There are about 55 million IDPs in the world today, outnumbering refugees by roughly 2:1. Although IDPs and refugees have similar wants, needs and fears, IDPs have traditionally been seen as a domestic issue, and the international legal and institutional framework of IDP protection is still in its relative infancy. This book explores to what extent the protection of IDPs complements or conflicts with international refugee law. Three questions form the core of the book's analysis: What is the legal and normative relationship between IDPs and refugees? To what extent is an individual's real risk of internal displacement in their country of origin relevant to the qualification and cessation of refugee status? And to what extent is the availability of IDP protection measures an alternative to asylum? It argues that the IDP protection framework does not, as a matter of law, undermine refugee protection. The availability of protection within a country of origin cannot be a substitute for granting refugee status unless it constitutes effective protection from persecution and there is no real risk of refoulement. The book concludes by identifying current and future challenges in the relationship between IDPs and refugees, illustrating the overall impact and importance of the findings of the research, and setting out questions for future research.

In international law, the refugee definition enshrined in Article 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol is central. Yet, seven decades on, the meaning of its key terms are widely seen as unclear. The Refugee Definition in International Law asks whether we must continue to accept this or whether a systematic legal analysis can shed new light on this important term. The volume addresses several framework questions concerning approaches to definition, interpretation, ordering, and the interrelationship between the definition's different elements. Each element is then analysed in turn, applying Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties rules in systematic fashion. Each chapter evaluates the main disputes that have arisen and seeks to distil basic propositions that are widely agreed, as well as certain suggested propositions for resolving ongoing debates. In the final chapter, the basic propositions are assembled to demonstrate that in fact there is now more clarity about the definition than many think and that considerable progress has been made toward achieving a working definition.

The word ‘refugee’ is both evocative and contested; it means different things to different people. For lawyers, the main legal reference point is the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. This concise and engaging book follows the structure of the Convention to explore international refugee law. Including an introduction to the historical and legal context, Colin Yeo draws on his experience as an immigration barrister to explain the present-day legal framework for global refugee protection. Chapters consider: • well-founded fear; • persecution; • the loss of refugee status and exclusion; • the rights of refugees; • and state responses to refugee claims. The book includes studies of key legal cases, reviews the successes and failures of the Convention and looks ahead to the future, including the impact of climate change and the Global Compact on Refugees. Communicating important legal concepts in an approachable way, this is an essential guide for students, lawyers and non-specialists.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the cornerstones of international refugee law. This Commentary provides a systematic, article-by-article analysis of their provisions in addition to crosscutting thematic chapters. The Commentary is an indispensable tool for lawyers, decision-makers, and academics.

Unpacking the major debates, this Oxford Handbook brings together leading authors of the field to provide a state-of-the-art guide to governance in areas of limited statehood where state authorities lack the capacity to implement and enforce central decision and/or to uphold the monopoly over the means of violence. While areas of limited statehood can be found everywhere - not just in the global South -, they are neither ungoverned nor ungovernable. Rather, a variety of actors maintain public order and safety, as well as provide public goods and services. While external state 'governors' and their interventions in the global South have received special scholarly attention, various non-state actors - from NGOs to business to violent armed groups - have emerged that also engage in governance. This evidence holds for diverse policy fields and historical cases. The Handbook gives a comprehensive picture of the varieties of governance in areas of limited statehood from interdisciplinary perspectives including political science, geography, history, law, and economics. 29 chapters review the academic scholarship and explore the conditions of effective and legitimate governance in areas of limited statehood, as well as its implications for world politics in the twenty-first century. The authors examine theoretical and methodological approaches as well as historical and spatial dimensions of areas of limited statehood, and deal with the various governors as well as their modes of governance. They cover a variety of issue areas and explore the implications for the international legal order, for normative theory, and for policies toward areas of limited statehood.

International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons examines the extent to which the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees protectsde jure stateless persons. While de jure stateless persons are clearly protected by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, this book seeks to explore the extent to which such persons are also entitled to refugee status. The questions addressed include the following: When is a person 'without a nationality' for the purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention? What constitutes one's country of former habitual residence as a proxy to one's country of nationality? When does being stateless give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons specified in the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or UNHCR mandate? What are the circumstances under which statelessness constitutes persecution or inhuman or degrading treatment? How are courts assessing individual risk or threat to stateless persons? The book draws on historical and contemporary interpretation of international law based on the travaux préparatoires to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its antecedents, academic writing, UNHCR policy and legal documents, UN Human Rights Council resolutions, UN Human Rights Committee general comments, UN Secretary General reports, and UN General Assembly resolutions. It is also based on original comparative analysis of existing jurisprudence worldwide relating to claims to refugee status based on or around statelessness. By examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, this book fills a critical gap in existing scholarship.