Eighth Annual Conference
The 8th Annual Conference took place in person at Senate House from 3-5 June 2024.
The conference offered a dedicated annual forum internationally to share and debate the latest research and cutting-edge developments in refugee protection. This conference builds on previous annual conferences by uniting academics, practitioners, policy-makers and students to consider pressing challenges in refugee law and policy.
2024 Dedicated Theme and Panels
The dedicated conference theme – ‘Pacts, Promises and Protection’ – interrogated the proliferation across the world of a range of new quasi-legal pacts on refugee protection.
A growing array of quasi-legal pacts between governments (and others) impacted on refugee protection. They included global compacts on refugees and migration, regional pacts like the EU Pact, Dublin Agreement, and Cartagena process, multilateral pacts, including voluntary repatriation agreements and CRRFs, and bilateral pacts, e.g. the UK-Rwanda deal, Italy-Libya deal and US-Canada agreement. They had a complicated relationship to the UN and regional treaties on refugees and human rights that underpin international protection.
What do such quasi-legal pacts mean for the future of refugee protection? How do they shift our understandings of this field of law? What is their impact on the lived experience of refugees? These key questions will be addressed by the ‘thematic’ panels at this year’s conference. Topics for proposals for these ‘thematic’ panels included:
- How do we theorise these quasi-legal pacts and their appeal? How do they shift the existing system of refugee protection? Do existing legal standards limit the content of the pacts? Does their proliferation undermine or strengthen regime coherence?
- What politics underpin these new pacts? To what extent do they reflect refugee interests or participation? What are their wider political and economic implications, e.g. on global/regional politics of refugee protection, human rights, migration etc.?
- How are such pacts implemented in practice? What are their effects on refugees? Do they provide for accountability mechanisms? Are their provisions challengeable before national or international courts? What view do courts take of their legality?
- Which States are creating these new pacts? What role do international organisations and agencies, including at the regional level, play? What about de facto governments or rebel groups, or other non-State actors, such as civil society?
- How do pacts fit with inter-State relations on economic cooperation, development aid, migration and climate change? What are the implications of e.g. readmission agreements or border co-operation, for power relations between States?
- What role can refugee-led and other civil-society organisations play in monitoring of these pacts? How might this play out in specific contexts e.g. domestically in the context of the UK-Rwanda deal or regionally centred on the EU’s new pact?
Programme
You can find the programme for the conference here.
Presentations and Recordings
The presentations and recordings from the conference can be found at the links below.
