The book chapter 'Lebanon and the establishment of international refugee law' is part of the edited volume Refugee Governance in the Arab World: The International Refugee Regime and Global Politics. Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, the edited volume is edited by Tamirace Fakhoury and Dawn Chatty.
About the publication
While there is emerging literature focusing on how Arab states dispute and leverage key refugee protection norms, little attention has been placed on the role of these states in historically developing these same norms.
In the book chapter, Janmyr examines Lebanon’s involvement between 1946 and 1967 in creating the legal norms and supporting institutions focused on the protection of refugees. Based on a close reading of the travaux préparatoires of the main legal instruments, this chapter aims to show how Lebanon has been involved in the international refugee law project from the very beginning and how Lebanese representatives to the United Nations advocated for remarkably progressive understandings of some of these norms.
The chapter illustrates Lebanon’s progressive stance when it comes to the individual’s right to asylum, which is particularly noteworthy – both when seen through a historical and through a more contemporary lens. Furthermore, it challenges the traditional depiction of Arab states as either passive or recalcitrant actors in the international refugee regime and shows instead how these states have made important contributions to the establishment of international refugee law.