Debating refugee protection 'here' or 'there'

Abstract

This working paper combines T. Alexander Aleinikoff and David Owen’s article “Refugee protection: ‘Here’ or ‘there’?” with a set of critical responses and concludes with a rejoinder by the authors. Aleinikoff and Owen argue that policymakers in the Global North are confronted with the ethical dilemma of deciding whether to use their resources to provide refugee protection within their own countries or to support refugee protection in the Global South. Aleinikoff and Owen claim that this dilemma presents a real and practical challenge, rather than just a theoretical one. Apart from a discussion of how Northern policymakers may deal with the dilemma of how to support refugee protection, Aleinikoff and Owen also outline the ethical dilemmas faced by policymakers in the Global South, highlighting the different issues Northern and Southern policymakers are confronted with in their regional contexts. In a first response, Matthew J. Gibney acknowledges the significance of Owen’s and Aleinikoff’s insights into the global division of refugee responsibilities, discussing them against the background of recent trends of Northern states preventing refugees from accessing their territories. Gibney delves into the desirability of proposals for differentiated responsibility between Northern and Southern states, exploring whether “over there” approaches might be acceptable from a realistic-utopian perspective. The second response by Cathryn Costello and Ashwini Vasanthakumar argues that acknowledging a “genuine ethical dilemma“ here concedes too much to the status quo, and questions the usefulness of the Global North/Global South distinction when addressing refugee obligations. Instead, Costello and Vasanthakumar suggest concentrating on the costs and detriments of containment and abolishing the distinction between “here” and “there” to enhance refugee protection on a global scale. The third response by Eleonora Milazzo suggests that the ongoing debate on providing refugee protection in the Global North versus the Global South overlooks a third option that she calls “protection elsewhere”. Milazzo argues that this approach, favored by many Global North policymakers, involves implementing non-arrival policies that evade responsibility and make protection uncertain. To address this issue, Milazzo proposes that in addition to balancing protection between the Global North and the Global South, clear limits should be placed on policies that aim to keep refugees away without specifying their protection prospects. This working paper ends with a rejoinder by Aleinikoff and Owen, in which the authors express gratitude for the respondents’ engagement and address some key points, agreeing on the importance of seeking better global responsibility-sharing mechanisms.