We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Refugees serve as an index of internal disorder and as prima facie evidence of the violation of human rights and humanitarian standards. No other issue, perhaps, provides such a clear and unassailable link between humanitarian concerns and legitimate international security issues.
Alan Dowty and Gil LoescherThe international states system has long been the result of an uneasy relationship between communitarian and cosmopolitan values. The refugee brings to the fore the very tension between the state prerogative to exclude and the human rights imperative to include. How, therefore, can refugee protection be reconciled with state sovereignty if the two are logically in opposition? The fact that states do take action on behalf of refugees suggests a human rights thinking. But this is compromised since the refugee issue is an inherently political one, and humanitarian action cannot be divorced from national and international politics. If the refugee opposes the thinking that underlies the make-up of international society – that all individuals should belong to a state – the answer to why states act for refugees might rather be due to a securitarian logic, not a humanitarian one.
This chapter first looks at the idea of ‘rights’ in order to ask what rights the refugee may rely on and how her position between states limits her ability to enjoy supposedly universal human rights.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
