Geoff Gilbert

• Professor at University of Essex

The Global Compact on Refugees is not legally binding, but it gives rise to commitments by the international community as a whole. It is also rooted in international refugee law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law. This article addresses how the GCR cannot give rise to binding obligations in international law, yet pro...

This article considers how a rule of law approach, central to the United Nations' (UN) activities since 2004, could facilitate the operationalization of interoperability across its agencies. But what do we mean by rule of law: the Anglo-American judicialized understanding or the civil law model, l'Etat de droit or Rechtsstaat, that is more rooted i...

This chapter explores the definition of refugee status in international law, its scope and limitations and consequent protection gaps for those forcibly displaced, including internally displaced persons (IDPs), who have crossed no international border. There is no equivalent definition for migrants, but like refugees, asylum-seekers, and IDPs, inte...

The fight against international crimes takes place at many levels, not just before the ad hoc tribunals and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Nor are international crimes limited to the crimes prosecuted before those courts. This article considers how extradition and other forms of rendition might be utilized to ensure the transfer of an unde...

There being no International Refugee Court, one way that the international protection of refugees develops is through domestic courts interpreting the Refugee Convention, and through cases brought before international and regional human rights treaty bodies. UNHCR's supervisory role, set out in article 35 of the Refugee Convention and paragraphs 1...

States face a dilemma: international law obliges them to protect individuals in certain contexts, but that may require them to harbour alleged criminals. If such individuals cannot be surrendered or deported, states have to find another means to ensure prosecution and avoid impunity. Unless the International Criminal Court can assume jurisdiction,...

There have been various responses to global warming. More recently, attempts have been made to utilize international criminal law. This article focuses on the criminalization of global warming as it might most directly affect humanity: climate change induced displacement. This article considers how criminalization takes place at the domestic and in...

This chapter discusses the conflict between human rights and expulsion in the context of international refugee law and considers the constraints placed upon states by international human rights law with respect to their right to control entry and deportation. While human rights bodies regularly reiterate the right of states to control who can enter...

Strategic Visions for Human Rights takes a multi-disciplinary approach to future directions for human rights. It looks beyond what international human rights treaties have so far established and considers the context in which rights in the twenty-first century might develop to meet needs. The book examines how international law might be utilized to...

While Europe is somewhat indeterminate as a legal concept, with respect to refugee law the European Union is the major actor in the region, although the Council of Europe provides protection guarantees for many people who fail to obtain refugee status consequent on the restrictive approach taken in EU Member States. In 2004, the EU finally produced...

The protection of refugees in international law is always a complex mix of legal obligations and policy considerations. Unfortunately, the reaction against refugees post September 11 has ignored both the facts and the pre-existing law. This paper addresses how refugees have fared in international and domestic law post September 11 2001. Given that...

Those applicants found to fall within Article 1 F of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 are excluded from refugee status. Article 1 F provides:The provisions of this Convention shall not apply to any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that: (a) he has committed a crime against peace, a war crim...

There is no express, extant right to autonomy in international law for groups within States. International law does accord a right of self-determination to peoples. On the other hand, States owe a much weaker obligation to persons belonging to minorities; they shall not be denied the right to enjoy their culture in community with other members of t...

Human Rights Quarterly 24.3 (2002) 736-780 This article will examine the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (Court), as it relates to, and possibly impinges on, minority groups. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention) contains no minority rights provision akin to Art...

Human Rights Quarterly 22.3 (2000) 861-862 The Impact of the Human Rights Bill on English Law, edited by Basil S. Markesinis (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998), 191 pp. anonymous The chief problem with Markesinis' The Impact of the Human Rights Bill on English Law, that it was premature, is an accusation that could never be laid at this review...

Abdullah Öcalan's arrival in Turkey in February 1999 followed a prolonged search in Europe for asylum following his expulsion from Syria in late 1998. His coming within Turkish jurisdiction raises questions about the international processes to bring alleged transnational fugitive offenders before the courts. This article looks at the extradition re...

The end of the Soviet period in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans has seen the open development of tensions in the region based on the presence of minority groups in states trying to reassert their individual identity. There has been a flurry of international activity by various organizations to establish minority rights standards and to e...

The Northern Ireland Peace Agreement 1 was concluded following multi-party negotiations on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It received 71 per cent approval in Northern Ireland and 95 per cent approval in the Republic of Ireland in the subsequent referenda held on Friday 22 May, the day after Ascension. To some, it must have seemed that the timing was s...

This paper starts from the premise that despite the enlarged role that UNHCR has taken on, particularly since 1989, it is still governed by its original 1950 mandate to provide international protection to refugees, as defined. This extended work has led it to deal with non-refugees, even those who are not even internally displaced, and to carrying...

An early warning system should prevent refugee flows wherever possible. This article focuses on mechanisms designed to relieve the tensions that give rise to trans-border influxes, rather than on the measures designed to help those preparing to receive imminent flows, which is not so much 'early warning' as effective crisis management. The author o...

This article examines the nature of religious minorities and the rights and guarantees accorded to them by public international law generally and, more specifically, international human rights law, particularly since 1945. It is not, though, simply a review of rights pertaining to the group's religious identity, for a difference in religion may ref...

The Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (Framework Convention)2 represents the latest step taken to protect minority groups in Europe.3 The revolution that has occurred in Europe since 1989 has reawakened many minority issues that had lain relatively dormant during Soviet domination of the eastern part...

This article calls for a change of approach with regard to dealing with the refugee flows seen in the 1980s and 1990s and focuses on tackling the root causes of such flows. As such, it represents a move away from considering refugees merely in relation to rights s/he might be accorded in the receiving state. Experience tells us that there are three...

this is a topic that has seen many academics giving vent to their views—Brownlie,1 Shaw,2 Tunkin,3 Green,4 Marek5 and Mohr,6 to name but a few of the more recent participants in the debate. So what point is there in adding to the above; would it not be simpler merely to give the relevant references and leave this overcrowded and somewhat predictabl...

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