On the occasion of UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi’s visit to Oslo, Professor Maja Janmyr took part in a panel discussing how the international community can work together to protect and assist refugees.
The panel discussion was organized by the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in association with the PRIO Migration Centre and the Norwegian Red Cross.
In addition to the High Commissioner for Refugees and Professor Janmyr, panel participants included Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Gunn Jorid Roset, Director of Section for Humanitarian Affairs at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Olivier Mukuta, Co-founder of VipiCash. Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, Research Director at PRIO and Co-Director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS), chaired the panel.
As the number of people displaced by Russian aggression in Ukraine passes two million, the panel sat for a timely discussion on how we can provide protection to refugees from Ukraine while not losing sight of unresolved refugee situations elsewhere.
Access to protection
Janmyr highlighted access to international protection as a main challenge for effective refugee protection today:
– Refugee containment is a hallmark of today’s international refugee regime. States are physically or procedurally deterring refugees and asylum seekers from reaching certain state borders in order to limit their access to international protection, Janmyr stressed.
Following up on this point, the High Commissioner pointed to a crisis of protection in which rich countries, namely in Europe, North America and Australia, manage refugees arriving to their shores with containment policies.
While legal migration channels are unavailable, political manipulation portraying refugees and migrants arriving irregularly as abusers of international protection has become common, the High Commissioner said.
Responsibility sharing
The High Commissioner was hopeful that support mobilized for refugees from Ukraine can be used to push for a better response to refugees everywhere.
He stated that Europe is now forced to have discussions on responsibility sharing, also including refugees from other parts of the world.
Discussing how Norway can contribute to better protection and assistance to the world’s refugees, Janmyr emphasized that:
– Norway needs to lead by example in order to be a credible advocate for global solutions.
She noted how Norway has been quite nonchalant of the mandate of UNHCR to monitor and supervise the implementation and interpretation of the Refugee Convention, and how UNHCR has criticized Norwegian asylum policies on multiple occasions.
The place of the Refugee Convention
Responding to a question on the role of the Refugee Convention in today’s responses to refugees, Janmyr noted how there is very little scholarship studying the impact of international refugee law and the Refugee Convention.
It is difficult to really say what the impact of the Refugee Convention is on refugee rights. On the one hand, it is the cornerstone of protection. On the other, it is evident from the practices of several signatory states that accession to the Convention does not automatically lead to better refugee protection, Janmyr said.
Referring to the BEYOND project, Janmyr also emphasized that many non-signatory states play a key role in protecting refugees worldwide but are often ignored in refugee law scholarship:
– Many of the world’s top refugee-hosting countries have neither signed nor ratified the Refugee Convention. Some 45 states have not ratified the Convention, including major refugee-hosting states like Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Pakistan, Janmyr explained.
– Non-signatory states reason and converse within the paradigm of international refugee law, and we have seen how domestic courts engage with international refugee law. This would then suggest that the Convention may have an important influence even in those states that have not ratified the Convention, Janmyr said.
Janmyr currently leads the research project BEYOND which over the next few years will study these dynamics further, including the question of how non-signatory states engage with and help create the international refugee law regime.