Date: 1 December 2022
The protection of those in flight is a paramount obligation. It is a duty that transcends borders as well as formal categories, such as status as a refugee under the 1951 Convention/1967 Protocol, or status as a stateless person under the 1954 Convention, or as a beneficiary of complementary or subsidiary protection, or someone entitled to humanitarian consideration, or someone deemed excluded for reasons of criminality or national security, or someone otherwise extraditable, or one who is trafficked, or the victim of modern slavery, or one who flees famine or drought. The humanitarian necessity is always there: among the questions facing lawyers, activists, and governments, as the movements of people continue to grow, are the extent to which a “principle of refuge” has normative force, and how, in any event, to galvanize and operationalise the necessary political will so that no more lives are lost, and futures can be rebuilt.
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill is an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Law & Justice and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, and is also Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law, and an Honorary Associate of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. He practised as a Barrister at Blackstone Chambers, London, from 2002-18, and represented pro bono the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as ‘Intervener’ in the House of Lords and Court of Appeal. He also acted as counsel for refugees and asylum seekers in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court and has acted in the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. He was President of Refugee & Migrant Justice (London) for 13 years, and President of the Media Appeals Board of Kosovo from 2000-03. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Refugee Law, was Editor-in-Chief from 1989-2001, and has lectured and published widely on human rights, the responsibility of States, statelessness, free and fair elections, child soldiers, child rights, the international law governing the movement of people between States, and the protection of refugees. In 1983, he published the first edition of The Refugee in International Law, the fourth edition of which, now co-authored with Professor Jane McAdam and Dr Emma Dunlop, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2021. In February 2020, he received the Stefan A. Riesenfeld Memorial Award at Berkeley Law for his contributions to international law and international refugee law.
Convenor: Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax, Professor of Law and Founding Director of the (B)OrderS Centre (Queen Mary Law School) & Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow (Universitat de Barcelona)