The US border is now officially closed to everyone, unless the crossing falls under the rather ill-defined category of “essential.” This move is officially described as a public health response to the spread of Coronavirus, but it also happens to coincide with the Trump administration’s frequently stated view that the country is “full.” Furthermore, it […]

Cambridge University Press has just published a fascinating new volume of essays about International Law and the Cold War, edited by Matthew Craven, Sundhya Pahuja, and Gerry Simpson. This volume covers a broad array of topics, including the crucial question of how Cold War politics affected or inspired new legal instruments. Tensions between ‘East’ and […]

In a series of blog posts, I have suggested that envisioning the 1967 Refugee Protocol as a simple amendment to the 1951 Convention, and fixating solely upon it eliminating the words ‘as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951’, doesn’t capture the complexity of the Protocol’s creation, the context within which it was […]

I have been engaged in a review of documents that in my opinion constitute the travaux préparatoires to the 1967 Refugee Protocol. This repository is unexpectedly rich, and in the preceding three blog posts devoted to this research, I have made a number of claims about its historical, political, sociological and legal importance. First, these […]

The Trump administration’s claims and actions in regards to refugees and asylum seekers have led lawmakers, lawyers and the courts to consider a crucial question: What are the US government’s obligations towards refugees and asylum seekers? There are rights that are clearly stated in such work as Hathaway and Neve, which are rooted in the […]

All around the world, refugees who are “lucky” enough to be rescued at sea, or to cross the border into a host country, are finding that the safe haven from persecution that they long for is being replaced with uncertainty (Malta), detention of children (Nauru), inhumane refugee camp conditions (Syria), financial ruin (Israel), forced return […]

I have amassed close to a thousand pages of letters, minutes of meetings, memos and reports that from repositories of the UNHCR, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Swiss archives, as well as various university library repositories. They offer precise details concerning the negotiations that produced the 1967 Protocol to the 1951 Geneva Convention, […]