08 March 2024
Hélène Cazes Benatar
Based in Casablanca, Hélène Cazes Benatar not only assisted a great number of refugees fleeing from Europe to North Africa, but also helped with the liberation of internees in Saharan forced labor and internment camps run by the Vichy regime. Her social, political and even clandestine activities were significant and extend far beyond the Jewish community until well after the Second World War. Continue reading >>
0
29 February 2024
Humanitarian Externalisation
Why are the reasons given in support of the declared aim of the current asylum policies in the UK, EU and USA of breaking the business model of smugglers expressed in humanitarian terms? It is, no doubt, tempting to simply dismiss this humanitarian rhetoric as hypocrisy, as the compliment that vice pays to virtue. Yet however justified that dismissal may be in particular cases, to turn away too quickly from this phenomenon would be to miss something of political significance in its form and to fail to register the historical entanglement of humanitarianism and border externalisation. Continue reading >>
0
20 February 2024
The CJEU’s Feminist Turn?
In Case C-621/21, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that women in general and women facing domestic violence in their country of origin in particular, qualify as a protected ‘social group’ under EU Directive 2011/95 and thus avail themselves for refugee status or subsidiary protection in the Common European Asylum System. This contribution applies the perspective of feminist approaches to international law to critically analyze what this decision means for women and victims of gender-based violence – in- and outside of the European Union. Continue reading >>
0
12 February 2024
Consolidating Group-Based Refugee Protection
Two pending cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provide an opportunity for the CJEU to consolidate group-based refugee protection. At the heart of the cases is a concern with granting refugee protection to groups of persons based on their inherent characteristics, in this case women and girls from Afghanistan. However, as the joined cases of AH and FN highlight, this is often due to an apprehension amongst asylum decision makers over the grant of protection to large groups of persons based on sex and misconceptions surrounding gender-based violence and discrimination. Continue reading >>
0
08 July 2023
The Dangers of Conflation
On May 17th 2023 Advocate General de la Tour handed down the Opinion in case C-402/22. It addresses the meaning of “particularly serious crime” found in Article 14 (4) (b) of the 2011 Qualification Directive, which sets out the grounds for revocation or refusal to grant refugee status under EU law. This provision refers to “refugees delinquents” and introduces security concerns of states as the ground for depriving persons of their refugee status. In practice, it opens the question of how to treat refugees that committed certain crime(s) after they obtained refugee status. In this blog I detail the AG’s answer to that question and raise one overriding concern regarding Article 14 QD. Continue reading >>
0
25 June 2023
Human Rights Violations to Deflect Refugees
The Council of the European Union (EU) recently reached a negotiating position (‘mandate’) on two significant elements of the ‘reform’ of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). The vision hailed as a ‘historic’ agreement by national governments is a direct threat to the right to asylum. The Council not only maintains all structural flaws of the CEAS intact but proposes a quagmire of asylum procedures marred by unworkable, unnecessarily complex rules, that are in clear violation of key human rights standards. Continue reading >>23 February 2023
Departing from Hostile Refugee Landscapes
In December 2022, the Swedish Migration Agency estimated that the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan has made the lives of Afghan women and girls so difficult that it counts as persecution based on gender. Against this background, the Migration Agency announced that all women and girls from Afghanistan are eligible to refugee status and a three-year residence permit in Sweden. These policies represent a major departure from the wide range of restrictive amendments that Denmark and Sweden, over the past decades, have introduced to their asylum laws with the aim of becoming less attractive target countries for asylum seekers. Continue reading >>
0
27 September 2022
Mobilized to Commit War Crimes?
In that earlier post, I argued that states have a legal obligation to recognize the refugee status of Russian troops who flee to avoid participating in what is a war of aggression. That argument applies equally to this new scenario. Those who refuse to fight and who leave Russia to avoid doing so should be recognized as refugees. However, there is now an additional way to ground that claim. Continue reading >>
0
26 September 2022
Why EU Countries Should Open Their Borders to Russian Draft-Evaders
In a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine, Russia’s President Putin announced a partial mobilisation on the 21st of September. Attempting to avoid the draft, thousands of Russian men are reported to be fleeing the country. Are EU countries obliged to grant asylum to Russians who are (pre-emptively) evading Putin’s draft? Continue reading >>10 August 2022
Law must be enforceable
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on 01.08.2022 that administrative decisions refusing family reunification must be open to judicial review with a legal remedy. The decision had been long awaited. The underlying article only provided for a legal remedy “against”, not “for” a transfer decision. The CJEU clearly rejects this view and emphasizes that administrative decisions must generally be subject to judicial review, which is a hindrance to the EU Commission's plans to significantly reduce the number of legal remedies in the revised EU legislation. Continue reading >>
0