Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State.

• Author: Winters, Matthew S.
• Position: Book Review

Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State Edited by Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm (United Nations University Press, 2003)

In 2000, as part of his ground-breaking work on the pathologies of international organizations, University of Wisconsin professor Michael Barnett presented an in-depth study of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the International Studies Association. (1) He was able to trace over the past 20 years the internal debate within the UNHCR that led to a shift in its organizational culture such that the repatriation of refugees came to be preferred over their resettlement outside of their country of origin. Barnett warned that this relatively new emphasis on repatriation has at times violated refugee rights under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, to which about 140 countries are party. In particular, there is valid concern that the UNHCR may be undermining the fundamental principle of refugee protection, the principle of non-refoulement, which stands opposed to the forcible return of people to countries where they face persecution. The culture that has evolved in the UNHCR, according to Barnett, is one that accepts the occasional violation of refugee rights so long as it occurs in the name of the greater good.

This window into the changing behavior of the UNHCR demonstrates the importance of basic philosophical concepts, the centrality of international legal definitions, and the power of organizational goals in the consideration of the world's refugee problem. When the single most important organization concerning refugees demonstrates a mutability that calls into question core concepts, we must re-evaluate the theoretical base from which we regard international migration, the institution of asylum, state-based immigration policy, and other components of and corollaries to the treatment of refugees. A widening circle of consideration would quickly encompass the definitions of essential concepts of international relations like sovereignty and security, and again raise questions of the obligations of states under international law. From the United Nations University comes a new volume co-edited by Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm designed to aid us in this fundamental inquiry.

The case hardly needs to be made for the importance of critiquing and furthering refugee studies and international...