The international protection of refugees and asylum seekers: new thinking, or no future?

Speaker: Professor Guy S. Goodwin-Gill (University of Oxford)
Chair: Professor Roger O’Keefe (UCL Laws)

About this event

Over one million refugees and asylum seekers entered Europe irregularly in 2015. In some quarters, the response was generous and hopeful; in others, ‘crisis’ was very much in the air, many claiming that Europe cannot cope with the numbers; that the EU’s free movement scheme was at risk; that Europe’s very way of life was being overwhelmed; that refugees and asylum seekers themselves are a threat to security. Meetings and conferences will be held through 2016 on both the refugee and the migration issue. Will any new thinking emerge that can have a meaningful impact on the drivers of displacement? Or will States merely tinker at the edges, concerned only to protect the narrowest of local interests, no matter the broader, international consequences. This paper will consider some of the options – some old and already tried in part, some long invoked but rarely implemented, and some new…

About the speaker

Professor Guy S. Goodwin Gill is Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, and Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law. He was formerly Professor of Asylum Law at the University of Amsterdam, served as a Legal Adviser in the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976-1988, and was President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-2003. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law and has written extensively on refugees, migration, international organizations, elections, democratization, and child soldiers. Recent publications include Migration and Refugee Protection in the 21st Century: International Legal Aspects, with Philippe Weckel, eds., Hague Academy of International Law, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2015; ‘The Continuing Relevance of International Refugee Law in a Globalized World’, (2015) 10 Intercultural Human Rights Law Review 25-42; ‘Non-Refoulement, Temporary Refuge, and the “New” Asylum Seekers’, in David Cantor & Jean-François Durieux, eds., Refuge from Inhumanity? War Refugees and International Humanitarian Law, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2014, 433-59; ‘The International Law of Refugee Protection’, in Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long & Nando Sigona, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 36-47;‘The Dynamic of International Refugee Law’, (2013) 25 International Journal of Refugee Law 651; ‘The Right to Seek Asylum: Interception at Sea and the Principle of Non-refoulement’, 23 International Journal of Refugee Law 443-57 (2011); The Limits of Transnational Law, (CUP 2010), with Hélène Lambert, eds., The Refugee in International Law, (OUP, 2007), 3rd edn. with Jane McAdam; Free and Fair Elections, (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2nd edn., 2006); Brownlie’s Documents on Human Rights, (OUP, 2010), 6th edn., with the late Sir Ian Brownlie, QC, eds; and introductory notes to various treaties and instruments on refugees, statelessness and asylum for the ‘Historic Archives’ section of the UN Audio-Visual Library of International Law. He is also a Barrister at Blackstone Chambers, London, where he practises in public international law generally, and in human rights, citizenship, refugee and asylum law.