Search

One of the most crucial sections of the International Tracing Service, centralized and established in 1948, was the Child Search Branch (CSB), which had the emotionally and ethically complex task of assisting 'unaccompanied children' who were discovered in far larger numbers after 1945 than anyone had expected. This article examines the role of three women relief workers who ran the CSB in the post-war period: Eileen Blackey, Cornelia Heise and Eileen Davidson. Focusing mainly on these exemplary cases, the authors evaluate and centre the women's leadership and decisions, showing how women who worked for the CSB played roles that subverted the general rule in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and its successor organization, the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which was that women were directed into 'feminine' posts. Women who ran the CSB played senior roles in child search and welfare and the decisions they took had significant and crucial outcomes for children, although gendered assessments of 'carer' and 'feminine' roles in UNRRA/IRO more widely have thus far hidden their activities as a subject worthy of analysis. This article shows how gender affected the spheres of influence the women carved out as they contributed to post-war reconstruction and humanitarian aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International regimes became the topic of scholarly discussion in the study of International Relations only in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Very little scholarly explanation has been provided to clarify why, when or under what circumstances international regimes modify or collapse so far, while the expectations of the regime participants may change and disperse. This paper aims to explore how states that are not traditionally considered the most significant for the creation, design, and continuation of the regime might challenge its framework and under what conditions these actions could impact the regime. Poland acceded to the International Refugee Regime (IRR) in 1991 after beginning its transformation. In the process of analysis, we argue that the Polish actions challenging the IRR by breaching its norms were initially accommodated with a mixture of cautious tolerance (especially among the EU Member States who wished to keep the migration flows through the Polish-Belarusian border stalled there), and tacit criticism expressed by international governmental institutions unwilling to exert too much pressure in order not to lose access to people with humanitarian and protection needs. We also claim that although the Polish authorities challenged the core rules of the IRR, their policies and actions have not led directly to a permanent destabilisation of the regime, not to mention its dissolution or collapse. However, unless not repelled in a direct and robust way by major participants of the regime, they might result in undermining the core framework of the IRR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Socialism, the Second World War, Stalinism, the expansion of the Soviet Union, and other political crises in Europe led to millions of people fleeing or being abducted in the 1930s and 1940s. The 'European refugee problem' led to the establishment of several international organizations. With the founding of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in 1946, the concept of refugees changed. For the first time, those that had previously been inevitably labelled refugees – whether as groups or individuals – now had to apply for this status. I argue that refugee status was not simply granted or denied by the IRO, but rather negotiated between IRO officers and applicants, often via a protracted, multistage process. These negotiations were based on the applicants' portrayal of their own personal history and not (only) an objective history itself. However, the question is not only whether people told the 'truth' or not; rather, the applicants' individual 'negotiation skills' and individual perceptions of the IRO officers also played a decisive role. Whilst most current research looks at the actions and strategies of ethnic, religious, national, or social groups, I expand this perspective with a focus on individual negotiations of being recognized as a refugee or Displaced Person by the IRO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jewish immigration to Australia in the aftermath of the Holocaust has been much studied. This article adds to knowledge of the period by examining one aspect which to the present has not received sufficient consideration, that pertaining to the funding of Jewish survivor immigration from Europe. After the war, the cost of travel to Australia was substantial, the equivalent of male average weekly earnings over 20 or more weeks. Australian Jewish organisations lacked the capacity to assist at the level required by thousands of Jewish survivors who wished to migrate to Australia and they turned to American Jewish welfare organisations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, but even their resources were stretched. The International Refugee Organisation stepped into the breach and provided subsidies for travel of Jewish refugees in the first year of its operation, but in August 1948 it was required to cease this funding assistance by Australia's minister for immigration, Arthur Calwell. This article examines the reasons for Calwell's action, and the failed attempts to secure its reversal during Calwell's ministry and that of his successor, Harold Holt. It reveals political judgements and prejudices that overrode humanitarian concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1947 and early 1952, the International Refugee Organization (IRO), which was established within the framework of the United Nations to "solve" the so-called European refugee problem after the end of the Second World War, resettled one million European refugees—victims of Nazism as well as East European refugees who escaped the Red Army—all over the world. The IRO's resettlement project is regarded as a blueprint for the establishment of the postwar international migration regime, and it was the predecessor of later initiatives such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In this article I argue that the IRO's history as well as the history of the migration regime after the Second World War has, thus far, mainly been written from the perspective of U.S. American and European history. Northern nations are considered agents in this history, while southern countries are considered as passive "destinations." In the case of Venezuela, the article argues that the Global South's active role in the migration regime must be taken into consideration to understand postwar migration. From the perspective of a connective approach to global history, it shows how Venezuela, as a political agent, was involved in shaping the migration regime; how it perceived itself as an agent within that regime; and how it intervened on a small scale to shape its form and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of KritV, CritQ, RCrit. Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft / Critical Quarterly for Legislation & Law / Revue critique trimestrielle de jurisprudence et de législation is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Achieving "durable solutions" is a central goal of the contemporary refugee regime. Durable solutions are often equated with three routes to resolving displacement—voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement—and the concept is closely tied to ideas about permanency, protection, and the rectification of refugees' legal limbo. Despite its contemporary prominence, the genealogy of the concept of durable solutions has not been fully considered. Accordingly, this article traces the origins of the concept of durable solutions for refugees from 1921 to 1960, examining how such solutions have been framed in international law and through the work of a key set of international organisations: the League of Nations, the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, the International Refugee Organization, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. By historicising durable solutions discourse as it evolved in the inter-war, immediate post-Second World War and early Cold War eras, and analysing how different international organisations have understood the "refugee problem" and solutions to it, this article promotes critical (re)engagement with the very notion of durable solutions, and demonstrates how the contemporary trinity of voluntary repatriation, local integration, and resettlement emerged from earlier approaches shaped by geo-political and legal considerations tied to particular groups of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post‐war Jewish immigration from Europe to Australia has been much discussed in the scholarship, primarily with reference to the question of discriminatory (anti‐semitic) intention on the part of the Australian government and the Department of Immigration bureaucracy. The assumption has often been made that the existence of discriminatory policy and practices necessarily led to a reduction in the number of Jewish migrants entering Australia. Using new data on Jewish entrants under the Mass Resettlement programme (1947–51) and under individual sponsorship on landing permits, as well as material from the archives of the International Refugee Organization which administered the Mass Resettlement programme, this article revisits the related questions of discriminatory intentions and quantitative outcomes, concluding that discriminatory intent, while stimulating evasive strategies of resistance on the part of individuals and institutions, does not necessarily result in significant reduction in the rate of entry of the migrants who are the object of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post‐war Jewish immigration from Europe to Australia has been much discussed in the scholarship, primarily with reference to the question of discriminatory (anti‐semitic) intention on the part of the Australian government and the Department of Immigration bureaucracy. The assumption has often been made that the existence of discriminatory policy and practices necessarily led to a reduction in the number of Jewish migrants entering Australia. Using new data on Jewish entrants under the Mass Resettlement programme (1947–51) and under individual sponsorship on landing permits, as well as material from the archives of the International Refugee Organization which administered the Mass Resettlement programme, this article revisits the related questions of discriminatory intentions and quantitative outcomes, concluding that discriminatory intent, while stimulating evasive strategies of resistance on the part of individuals and institutions, does not necessarily result in significant reduction in the rate of entry of the migrants who are the object of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the contributions of African states to the development of international refugee law and explores the role African human rights supervisory bodies have played in the interpretation and application of this field of law. While Africa's contributions to international refugee law are often overlooked, this article sets out to identify Africa's involvement in the drafting process of the UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. It also explores the legal framework for refugees in Africa, in particular the OAU Refugee Convention and the Bangkok Principles on Status and Treatment of Refugees, and the extent to which these two instruments have enriched international refugee law. The article argues that some of their provisions may provide evidence of customary rules of international law. Lastly, it examines some of the authoritative pronouncements made by African human rights supervisory bodies, in so far as they adopt a progressive approach to interpreting the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Esboços: Historias em Contextos Globias is the property of Esbocos: historias em contextos globais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article challenges the assumption that until relatively recently refugees or persons with lived refugee experience have not been involved in the development of international refugee law and policy. By drawing on primary source material – including the preparatory work for international legal instruments such as the 1933 Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees and the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, along with the operational work of the League of Nations, the International Refugee Organization and the early years of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – this article argues that refugees and persons with lived refugee experience exercised significant influence and thought-leadership in the development of international refugee law and policymaking during the foundational years between 1921 and 1955. These contributions to the development of international refugee law and policy are significant because they not only reorient our understanding of the ways in which international law and policy pertaining to refugees has been developed and negotiated to date, but also because they provide a practical example of how refugees can more meaningfully be included in the creation of laws and policies that affect them going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines an agenda to relocate refugees to the centre of historical enquiry by recovering and analysing their voices, in the form of letters and petitions sent to authorities within the refugee regime. We adopt a comparative approach by using evidence from four distinct incarnations of the refugee regime: the League of Nations in interwar Europe; the early post-1945 era represented by the International Refugee Organization (IRO); the era of the newly established Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); and the quarter century following Partition in India, specifically its impact in West Bengal. The article demonstrates how refugees' voices were shaped by the social, cultural and administrative contexts within which they wrote, and that understanding these contexts can help us see why refugees framed their claims in particular ways. The article suggests that Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of 'polyphony' provides a means of understanding how refugees understood their predicament and engaged with the refugee regime from often contradictory and ambiguous viewpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

»,Diejenigen, die die Arbeit wirklich machen...' Unbegleitete Kinder, Sozialarbeiter und die schwierige Umsetzung humanitärer Ziele im Nachkriegsdeutschland «. The youngest survivors of Nazi persecution had experienced a variety of tragic fates: children lived through the horrors of the concentration camps, endured forced labor, and even kidnapping for the so-called Germanization agenda of the Nazis. From 1945 onwards, the military and relief agencies in occupied Germany witnessed the aftereffects of hitherto unparalleled crimes against children. They devised strategies aimed at their care, repatriation, and resettlement. As this article will show, it was by no means always possible to carry out this task successfully. Policies created at the administrative level frequently clashed with the reality of everyday relief work. This article reflects on the current state of historical research regarding displaced children, and in particular the potential of microhistory as a means of improving our knowledge about this aspect of the postwar period. By drawing upon the example of the IRO Children's Village in Bad Aibling, Upper Bavaria, the discrepancy between official policy and the actual struggle in the field - including ideological factors, practical challenges, and the human element - is illustrated. In doing so, the aim is to help refine previous narratives regarding the care for displaced children in the postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

»Die Verhandlung des Resettlements in Venezuela nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: eine Erkundung«. After the end of World War II, millions of people were uprooted all over Europe. After realizing that many of those people did not want to return to their former places of origin, the United Nations founded the International Refugee Organization (IRO) to repatriate those displaced persons (DPs) who wanted to return home and to resettle refugees who did not in other countries. Venezuela was neither actively involved in World War II nor (at that time) in the approaching Cold War. Nevertheless, this "third world" country became involved both in the political discussion about the international resettlement program and as the receiving country of 17,000 DPs. In this context, the paper asks who was resettled in Venezuela and in what way those people were able to influence and negotiate their resettlement in Venezuela. The paper thus focusses on the agency of DPs and the IRO's decision-making processes in their European field offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

»,Not the Concern of the Organization?' Die IRO und das Resettlement ethnischer Deutscher aus Osteuropa in Übersee nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg «. This article examines the postwar trajectories of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from Slovenia, Romania, and Ukraine who had ended up in Germany and Austria due to Nazi resettlement. Their story is usually told within the context of German "flight and expulsion," but is also part of the history of international refugee management. Although ethnic Germans were not eligible for care by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), some of them did seek assistance. This article analyzes the bureaucratic negotiation between IRO officials and applicants using different strategies of "ethnic conversion." Individual strategies consisted of claiming a nationality other than German, and trying to back up this claim with a convincing narrative. These efforts usually failed, petitioners living in mixed marriages being a partial exception. Collective conversion worked in the case of the Mennonites, thanks to their well-connected international relief organization, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). The article also traces the overseas resettlement of ethnic Germans, focusing on supporting institutional and family networks. Taken together, these perspectives open a window on the postwar negotiation of violence-induced migration at the margins of the supposedly clearly distinguished categories of Germans and non-Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

»Erkundung (erzwungener) Migrationswege, Strukturen der Neuansiedlung und Agency von Displaced Persons: Dokumentenbestände und Forschungspotentiale der Arolsen Archives«. As a consequence of Nazi persecution, millions of liberated forced laborers, camp prisoners, and others found themselves outside their countries of origin in May 1945. Dealing with these displaced persons (DPs) constituted one of the largest challenges the Allies faced after World War II. Allied aid organizations not only provided care for the DPs while preparing their repatriation or resettlement but also had to search for, and clarify the fate of, those missing. To achieve this goal, the International Tracing Service (ITS) was set up in Arolsen, Germany. This institution, which has recently been renamed the Arolsen Archives, developed into the world's largest repository of documents on Nazi persecution as well as on Allied efforts to manage the DP problem. Most of the holdings have already been digitized. Starting with a description of Allied registration procedures, this paper outlines the development and scope of DP collections held at Arolsen. Special focus is given to casefiles of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) regarding the care and maintenance of DPs living in occupied Germany. The paper discusses how the records can be used to explore pathways of (forced) migration, to research resettlement structures, and to address the issue of DPs' agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of the examination dissenting opinions submitted by judges of administrative courts in excise duty cases in the years 2004-2018. The analysis covers the judgments of all sixteen administrative courts in Poland issued in the abovementioned period. These criteria led to the selection of research material covering a votum separatum from 78 judgments issued by administrative courts on excise duty and 60 judgements issued by the Supreme Administrative Court as a result of filing a cassation appeal against administrative court judgments. By using quantitative analysis in the performed case studies, it has been determined that, for example, administrative court judges extremely rarely submit in cases of excise duty votum separatum -- about five times per year. Between 2004 and 2018 out of 19,172 judgments issued only to 78 of them issued a dissenting opinion, which is more or less 0.5% of the total. In the course of case studies using qualitative analysis it has been observed, for example, that in the constituent part of the justification -- the legal basis of the decision and its explanation -- the SAC referred to the arguments expressed in a separate opinion in 41% of judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutional and international law often interrelate and regulate certain areas differently. The legal scholar's viewpoint significantly determines his or her approach to the role of international and constitutional law in certain legal circumstances. This article focuses on the issue of determining the place of international treaties and generally recognized international law principles and norms in Ukraine's domestic legal system. Ukraine has a well-established practice of automatically recognizing international treaties' priority over its norms of domestic legislation, but this priority cannot be regarded as absolute. This article argues that legal scholars advance different arguments on this because they apply different approaches -- approaches that originate either in constitutional or international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past few years have seen the issue of refugees rise in prominence, particularly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. It has been almost seven decades since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was set up and the first international treaty regulating the issue of refugees signed. This article examines the international legal framework governing the issue of refugees and argues that it is ineffectual because refugees are inherently a matter of high politics -- refugees are fundamentally a political issue subject to the vicissitudes of politics. The moral and economic justifications for the international refugee regime are also highly contested, and this contestation plays out in the political realm. The international refugee regime and legal regulation of the issue is unlikely to be effective for as long as the nation-state continues to be the primary actor in the international world order. This is because the international refugee regime requires enforcement by states to be effective -- however, political, moral and economic vicissitudes across the states involved impede its ability to function in its ideal conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian woman Esma Banner (1910–2001) was a keen amateur photographer who worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) between 1945 and 1951. While posted in Germany, Banner kept a diary, wrote over 100 letters to her family, kept official reports, took photographs and collected art and craft by Displaced Persons (DP). In particular, photography and family were important to her. She said in a letter home: "You are all always in my thoughts – every picture I take is for you". This article primarily focuses on visual materials in Esma Banner's personal papers. Banner's collection substantially documents her professional relief work with UNRRA and the IRO, and through this, her interactions with other relief workers as well as displaced children and adults can be seen. Here Banner's photographs and albums are read alongside published materials, letters and diaries to reveal a range of political, personal and gendered understandings of post‐Second World War reconstruction work. The material also provides some insights into the experiences of forcibly displaced children and adults. Banner's photographs are used to reflect upon the place of visual and personal sources in writing histories of post‐Second World War reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, in the wake of the USA's Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the American Committee for the Resettlement of Polish Displaced Persons received thousands of letters from refugees of peasant and worker background residing in camps in Germany and Austria. These potential immigrants appealed to the Polish diaspora for help with securing assurances of accommodation and work which would enable them to resettle in the USA. This paper investigates the discursive strategies of the authors and the wider meanings of their emigration endeavour. Firstly, it demonstrates that non-elite Displaced Persons (DPs) adopted the language of martyrology, patriotism, anti-Communism and freedom to maximise their chances of emigration. These DPs did not evoke the language of rights as they appealed to the traditional network of support, based on benevolence and familiarity. Secondly, it argues that the American Poles and Polish social elites played a crucial role in resettlement of the DPs, providing an additional layer of screening, here called 'the moral screening'. It is an example of how ethnic and cultural communities mediated the resettlement procedures supervised by international humanitarian organisations. Using a 'history from below' approach, this article argues that during this episode of migration, political and economic ideological underpinnings intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, thousands of Jewish DPs reached Italy on their way to Palestine or other countries and received assistance by UNRRA and other organizations. Many joined the hachsharot that were established all over the country between 1945 and 1948. This article analyses the differences between UNRRA and the Joint in providing relief and rehabilitation to the DPs and the role of hachsharot, discussing to what extent they provided better opportunities for rehabilitation compared to DP camps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks into refugee narratives produced or endorsed and promoted as children's reading matter by international refugee relief organizations. The analysis accounts for their emergence as a separate genre with recurrent features, while questioning the assumptions that underlie their production and the aims they serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alan Burgess's 1950 BBC radio play, The Greatest Detective Story in History, presented a moving and insightful analysis of the work of the International Tracing Service (ITS) and revealed how much was known about the crimes of the Nazis so soon after the war. This article uses Burgess's play in order to focus on the operation of the ITS's child search branch and considers why the work of the ITS was deemed an appropriate topic for a radio drama in Britain in 1950. It argues that, despite the limits of its analysis and adherence to culturally familiar narrative frameworks and conventions, Burgess's play captures the ways in which the Third Reich was understood in Britain in the postwar years: as a vast act of criminality which the British could proudly claim to have helped to destroy. The play also reminds us of the postwar moment when Britain was proud to be involved in international organizations and when rebuilding Europe was perceived to be in British interests. Keywords: tracing; children; radio; Nazism; Britain, Our imaginations are surfeited with the endless sensationalism of our daily reports. Alan Burgess, The Greatest Detective Story in History (1) THE SETTING At 8 p.m. on May 16, 1950, [...]

This article analyses the drafting process of the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum, with particular attention given to the internal deliberations of the Australian government, which, at the time and since, has been a key contributor to the formation of international refugee and human rights law. It demonstrates that the Australian government believed that by voting for the Declaration it would commit itself to responding to requests for asylum in accordance with the Declaration – not just because the Declaration could have been the stepping stone for a convention, but because it was not confident that ‘soft law’ would be treated as entirely non-binding. The article also shows that the existence of the Declaration influenced Australian government policies and practices in the immediate aftermath of its adoption, thus demonstrating that it exerted a compliance pull independently of its perceived legal status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya’s decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex highlights structural flaws in the international refugee regime. While much attention has been paid to Kenya’s reasoning, less has been given to the reactions of organisations and states. Given the state’s primacy in the international system and uncertainty about refugees, Kenya’s decision is perhaps unsurprising. It is contended that the stakeholders were unprepared because of path dependence and disbelief that Kenya would repatriate the refugees. While stakeholder reactions arguably demonstrate concern for refugees, the international refugee regime remains unquestioned, sustaining revenue streams that may fuel corruption, encourage lengthy encampment and prolong conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• I examine the role of buzzwords – self-reliance, resilience, and economic inclusion – in development approaches to refugees. • Three buzzwords redefine the responsibility of refugees and their hosts in undertaking neoliberal development. • These buzzwords are given moral power by policymakers and are setting up exemplary behaviours of refugees and hosts. • In contrast to empowering narratives, development approaches led by these buzzwords can damage both refugees and hosts. • These buzzwords are employed to reframe the lack of solutions for displacement crisis as a 'development opportunity'. Buzzwords play an important role in setting up the scope and direction of aid policies. Alongside the growing focus on development-led approaches in the international refugee regime, three buzzwords – self-reliance, resilience, and economic inclusion – have achieved particular prominence in recent refugee policy-making. Drawing upon a review of policy documents and multi-sited empirical research in Sub-Saharan Africa, this article gives a detailed analysis of how these buzzwords intersect with one another and elucidates the roles they play in shaping development-oriented approaches to refugees. While this trifecta is painted with positive connotations, empirical research shows that developmental approaches underpinned by these buzzwords can have detrimental effects on both refugees and hosts. Building upon this analysis, it offers a theoretical approach to understand the current mainstreaming of developmental support within the international refugee regime from a lens of 'reframing', which is a strategy to redefine social problems and thereby control discourses around their solutions. The study shows that as a discursive apparatus, this triad of buzzwords is instrumentalised by policymakers to reframe the absence of solutions for 'displacement crisis' as 'development opportunities' in order to protect the damaged global refugee system. In so doing, such buzzwords play a crucial role in redefining the responsibility of refugees and their hosts in undertaking neoliberal development, while simultaneously reducing the ambit of responsibility of the international refugee regime. By analysing these popular buzzwords as a set, the article contributes to a deepened understanding of the ways in which these innocuous words are embedded in a broader 'ideological project' informed by the political and economic incentives of the global policymakers. It also sheds light on the possible wider consequences of the current mainstreaming of development-led approaches for refugee rights and protection issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent increases in large-scale refugee movements, particularly as a result of the Syria crisis, have led to renewed policy and academic interest in the long-contested principle of burden sharing in the refugee regime. Recital 4 of the preamble of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) expresses this principle as follows:. Considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognized the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international co-operation .... Through an analysis of the travaux préparatoires of the 1951 Convention relating to recital 4, this article seeks to shed light on the origins of the inclusion of burden sharing in the contemporary refugee protection regime. It is argued that the travaux préparatoires reveal considerable divergence among the drafters regarding both the placement of the burden-sharing principle in the preamble (form) as well as its scope and legal effects (substance), and suggest that the ultimate decision to retain recital 4 was a political compromise. In considering the intentions of the drafters with respect to recital 4, particular focus is placed on three potential 'legal effects' that arise to a greater or lesser extent from the discussions: (1) recital 4 as having a force majeure effect; (2) recital 4 as creating positive obligations to assist receiving States; and (3) the implications of recital 4 for interpretation of other provisions of the 1951 Convention. The article shows that the position taken by some of the drafters, notably with respect to the ability of States receiving large numbers of refugees to implement certain 1951 Convention obligations in the absence of international support, was questionable from the perspective of international treaty law. However, the discussions also foreshadowed doctrinal and practical issues in the application of the 1951 Convention regime that remain ongoing today, and provide important context for the considerable ambivalence that subsists with respect to the scope and nature of the burden-sharing principle in modern refugee law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, the child search branch of the International Tracing Service, set up after the war by the Red Cross and the Allies, began a search for the mother of a four year old boy, born to a forced labourer and left at a hospital in Rottenmunster at 8 months old. His file records first his abandonment, then his mother's strong resistance to external pressure to sign his adoption papers. His later attempts to trace his mother is also recorded. Taken together, the records shed light on the history of Nazi slave labour, lost children, forced adoptions, exile and the search for identity that connected episodes of displacement for many DPs that ended up in Australia. This article examines this history, and also considers the role of the archive as a powerful source for both enabling and disabling the search for family in the decades following the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The international refugee regime has certainly evolved over the past 65 years, but fundamental challenges remain. On the one hand, an international organization (UNHCR - strictly speaking, a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly) with a global mandate to provide protection and seek solutions operates within a widely ratified treaty framework, together with a 98 Member State Executive Committee. On the other hand, notwithstanding the 2003 decision to put UNHCR on a permanent footing ('until the refugee problem is solved'), the system overall continues very much as if it and the problems of displacement were still temporary. International cooperation is still largely ad hoc and unstructured; funding depends on voluntary contributions; the mechanisms for early warning, conflict prevention, and mediation are insufficient; and viable safe havens as alternatives to displacement are rarely considered, let alone initiated. More significantly, displacement-related challenges are compounded by States' reluctance to 'internationalize' key aspects of the movement of people, with a view to the better and more humane management of migration. This paper proposes some structural changes to bring the international protection mandate into the 21st Century; in particular, the General Assembly should revise UNHCR's 1950 Statute, not only to reflect its current responsibilities for refugees, internally displaced persons, and the stateless, and to reform the funding base, but also to extend its mandate to migrants without protection. No new treaty or organization is called for and international obligations would remain unchanged. However, working with such an experienced operational partner in the field, States would be free to develop a complementary legal or standards base on migration matters, which, currently, are commonly contested and obstructed by the lack of international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on Romani (Gypsy) migration has typically focused either on longue durée patterns of persecution and marginalization or on Roma migrants within Europe since the fall of communism. This article shows how the westward migration of Roma after the Second World War and during the early years of the Cold War breaks with several common assumptions about the history of displaced persons, refugees, and Roma alike. Contrary to claims about unbroken continuities in the persecution of European Roma, in the immediate postwar years officers of the International Refugee Organization used ‘Gypsy' as a privileged category that improved an applicant’s changes of getting support from the organization. Internationalization thus offered a brief respite from discrimination for one of the only ethnic refugee groups without its own lobby. This situation changed by the 1950s, when national refugee administrations replaced the earlier international refugee regimes established in the wake of the war. Roma became an exception at a time when West European governments were accepting asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe as part of their ongoing Cold War propaganda efforts. In this period government officials concerned with protecting national interests reverted to earlier classifications of ‘Gypsies' as nomads who were, by definition, not refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O artigo cuida da participação do Brasil, como Estado não-membro, nas atividades da Organização Internacional para os Refugiados (OIR). Após contextualizar do ponto de vista histórico, político e jurídico tanto o estabelecimento quanto o mandato da OIR, o autor analiza, com o uso de fontes primárias pesquisadas no Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty, os bastidores, a implementação e os resultados da política exterior do Brasil no que respeita à proteção de refugiados no periodo que se estende de 1946 a 1952.The article deals with Brazilian participation, as a non-member State, in the activities of the International Refuge e Organization (IRO). The author examines first the historical, political and legal context of both the establishment and the mandate of the IRO. He then uses primary sources researched at the Historical Archive of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to analyze the internal decision-making, enforcement and outcomes of Brazilian foreign policy relating to the protection of refugees between 1946 and 1952.

The contemporary international refugee system was the product of a desire to provide protection and assistance to those who have a well-founded fear of persecution, a somewhat sophistic term in the twenty-first century. Increasingly, however, the system is being challenged by States seeking to reduce refugee applications by adhering to a restrictive interpretation of their Refugee Convention obligations. Underscoring the link between natural law, human rights and refugee law, the paper shows how the European Court of Human Rights has become an important actor in preserving the rights of those seeking refuge within the Council of Europe's jurisdiction. The article thus seeks to encourage further research on the role of legal theory in the refugee regime as well as on how regional courts can help challenge State power in an era of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the rise of the international refugee regime in Asia, focusing on the work of the International Refugee Organization in repatriating overseas Chinese from mainland China back to their homes in Southeast Asia from 1947 to 1956. It looks both at how the International Refugee Organization inherited this repatriation project from its predecessor—the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—and its survival after a civil war installed a new, Communist government on the Chinese mainland. Doing so reveals the extent to which both Chinese governments had to rely on outside assistance to fulfil an important task of maintaining positive ties between Chinese abroad and the homeland. Using research from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives in Beijing and Taipei, as well as records from relevant parties in the British and American governments, this article places the repatriation programme and the larger efforts of the International Refugee Organization in Asia in a broader context of regional foreign relations and the origins of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]