Summary
Conclusions of the Roundtable on the Future of Refugee Convention Supervision
by James Hathaway March 27th, 2013
[James Hathaway is
the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law and the Director, Program
in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan Law School]
Finally, a break-through on the conundrum of Refugee
Convention supervision! The UN Refugee Convention has languished for more
than 60 years without any formal mechanism to provide arms-length international
oversight of treaty obligations. While state parties agree to assist
UNHCR to implement its duty of institutional supervision, refugee law has no
equivalent of the Human Rights Committee or Committee Against Torture to
provide transparent evaluation of state compliance, or to provide authoritative
guidance — for example, on such key questions as who qualifies for Convention
refugee status, or the rights held by refugees under international law.
In September 2012, Justice Tony North of the
Australian Federal Court (and former president of the International Association
of Refugee Law Judges) and I co-convened an expert meeting at Downing College,
Cambridge, to try to find a way forward on supervision of the Refugee
Convention. Drawing on studies prepared by the Cambridge Pro Bono Project
(to be published later this year), a group of leading jurists and scholars from
around the world conceived a means to break the deadlock. The essence of
the mechanism proposed is the establishment of a
Special Committee of Experts, comprised of judges and others tasked with
the issuance of advisory opinions at the
request of the High Commissioner, courts, and specialist
tribunals. The just-released Summary Conclusions of the
Roundtable (.pdf) are now available.
