Refugee Law In The Global South: Why India And Africa Resist The 1951 Convention

Abstract

The international legal regime on the protection of the refugees is based on the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. The wide ratification of these instruments by countries in the Global North notwithstanding, some major countries sheltering refugees in the Global South (such as India and most African nations) are non-signatories to the framework, or express a guarded attitude when approaching the Convention (which is often hostile). The paper is going to discuss the historical, political, and legal aspects behind this resistance centrally referring to the examples of India and Africa. It complains that Convention was by its Eurocentric origin, has a limited definition of who is a refugee and is incompatible, in its view to the societies and politics of the Global South as being partial reasons why Convention is hardly acceptable.[1]

Though India has received huge number of refugees over the decades and has a very diverse refugee composition, it has refused to be a party to the Convention and wants to follow an ad hoc, executive-base-policy-model with constitutional approach and diplomacy as the basis. Conversely, African governments have implemented the African solution to the African problem of refugees by following the 1969 OAU Convention which provides a broader approach to the definition of refugee versions which is closer to the African reality of mass movements of people occasioned by war, violence and lawlessness. Nevertheless, critical implementation, lack of resources and political instability still makes a good protection harder.[2]

The critical analysis of this paper is that India and Africa have evolved alternative and contextual nature of refugee administration and the wider impact of the alternative administration of refugees on international law of refugees globally. It also questions the North-South division of responsibility-sharing in the refugee dealings and demand a more pluralistic reconsideration of international refugee norms and establishments. The paper supports the need to decolonize the international system of refugees and accept the validity of the strategies of the Global South as the part of the international system of protection on equal terms as the main pillars of worldwide sovereignty according to the theory of legal pluralism and postcolonial sovereignty and the establishment of regionalism.

[1] UNHCR (2019) Handbook on procedures and criteria for determining refugee status. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

[2] OAU (1969) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Addis Ababa: Organisation of African Unity