2. Refugee Rights Are
Human Rights

A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical opinion. With us the meaning of the term “refugee” has changed. Now “refugees” are those of us who have been so unfortunate as to arrive in a new country without means and have to be helped by Refugee Committees. (Arendt 1994: 110)

Furthermore, the Cold War, i.e., the ideological battle between the Western bloc (led by the United States) and the Eastern bloc (led by the Soviet Union), was also already underway at the time so that another aim of the Convention was to provide legal protections for individuals fleeing persecution due to political reasons (Gatrell 2016). Two central components primarily determine how protection is ensured: the definition of ‘refugee’ and the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits signatory states from returning refugees to territories where their life or freedom would be threatened. This effort to protect the rights and dignity of individuals who have lost the protection of their home countries is part of a broader movement towards establishing international norms and standards for the protection of human rights, as exemplified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The 1967 Protocol later extended the Refugee Convention’s scope in terms of time and geography and to this date, it is still the fundamental basis for the international protection of persons with refugee experience. The Convention clearly defines who a refugee is, their rights, and what kind of legal protection—including the right to protection from persecution and other assistance—refugees should receive from the 149 states around the world who have signed the Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol.

However, some countries are avoiding their international obligations by manipulating who, if any, among those forced to flee their countries, will be granted refugee status, i.e., be officially recognized as refugees, and receive protection and support as required under the Geneva Convention (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2021). While human rights are universally applicable due to the inherent dignity of every human being, refugee status is conditional upon identifying a specific category of protected persons to which the individual belongs (Chetail 2014). From the beginning, the Refugee Convention was intended as “a compromise between unfettered state sovereignty over the admission of aliens, and an open door for non-citizen victims of serious human rights violation” (Chetail 2014: 24). In fact, the definition of a refugee in Article 1 of the Geneva Convention includes a number of conditions: a person who is outside their country of origin and who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, and is unable to avail themselves of the protection of that country or to return to it owing to such fear of persecution (UNHCR 2010). The selective nature of this definition has been increasingly criticized as arbitrarily privileging the rights of some forced migrants over others (McAdam & Wood 2021). On the other hand, the central concept of persecution is not defined by the Refugee Convention, but left to the subsequent interpretation of the individual states. However, human rights treaties and standards adopted since the Geneva Convention provide a universal framework that aids in harmonizing the interpretations of state parties and offers a more predictable basis for determining refugee status. The concept of persecution, central to refugee law, has increasingly been interpreted through the lens of human rights standards, promoting a more principled and less subjective application (Chetail 2014). Considering that the reasons why people in today’s world become refugees have also been changing, this is an important development.

First of all, I would like to share my educational level and experience with PREP IP. I received my M.Sc. in Rehabilitation Science from Bangladesh Health Professions Institute in March 2021. Recently, I got a job at an international medical aid organization where I worked as a psychosocial support supervisor on a USAID-funded project.

For ten days, we stayed in a border city trying to cross to Pakistan. For ten days, we tried to cross the border four or five times every day, but we couldn’t succeed. Each time we attempted to pass the border we thought that we would die; it was an extremely horrible situation, the worst that I had ever faced in my life. My mother was sick and she had back problems. Every time we used a wheelchair for her because she was not able to walk. Thousands of men, women, children, young people, and older people wanted to leave Afghanistan. The Taliban and the Pakistan militia both said that Hazara people were not allowed to cross the border. Finally, we managed to escape Afghanistan without the Taliban catching us.

To give the human rights contained in the Universal Declaration a binding form under international law, the United Nations adopted two human rights charters in 1966: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Social Covenant) (United Nations 1966a) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Civil Covenant) (United Nations 1966b). Both came into force in 1976. Together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two additional protocols to the Civil Covenant, they form the so-called International Bill of Human Rights, a term used mainly in English-speaking countries.

In literature across various disciplines, numerous arguments assert that refugee rights are human rights. These arguments are frequently addressed in an interdisciplinary manner, as refugee rights encompass legal, political, ethical, and social dimensions. Consequently, the universal rights of refugees today are not solely based on the Refugee Convention but also derive from the general standards of international human rights law as another primary source:

General human rights law adds a significant number of rights to the list codified in the Refugee Convention, and is regularly interpreted and applied by supervisory bodies able to refine the application of standards to respond to contemporary realities (Hathaway 2021: 154).

Theories of global justice argue that injustices experienced by refugees are often a result of global power structures and inequalities, for which wealthier states also bear responsibility (e.g., Farmer 2004; Pogge 2005). Reports on the situation of refugees worldwide (e.g., Bast et al. 2020; O’Flaherty 2023) systematically document the human rights violations that refugees often face, thus underscoring the need to comprehensively understand and protect their rights as human rights. On 19 September 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (United Nations 2016). This declaration reaffirms the importance of the international refugee regime and includes a wide array of commitments by member states to strengthen and enhance mechanisms for the protection of displaced persons.

Our optimism, indeed, is admirable, even if we say so ourselves. […] We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives (Arendt 1994: 110).

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948: 1) addresses the issue of health as a basic human right:

Similarly, the Constitution of the World Health Organization (1948: 1) acknowledges health as a basic human right by stating that:

The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of “race”, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

In the 2018 Edinburgh Declaration, participants from over 50 countries at the First World Congress on Migration, Ethnicity, Race, and Health (MERH) made a number of recommendations that are highly relevant for refugee health:

Eliminating barriers to access to healthcare and promoting protection of health of all people on the move, including those in an irregular situation, needs to be prioritised.

The full participation of migrants, ethnic minorities, indigenous populations and Roma in policy development, service planning, healthcare delivery, and research and evaluation is vital.

Relevant and appropriate data are required urgently for policy makers and service providers to tackle inequities.

Harmonization of, and agreement on, definitions and concepts should be sought by building on the consensus achieved at MERH 2018.

Strengthening collaboration between institutions, organizations and countries aimed at improving the health of migrants and ethnic minorities.

A Global Society should integrate academic, professional and community work on health and healthcare in this field (First World Congress on Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Health 2018).

Our lives were in danger in Pakistan too because circumstances had recently changed there, and the government had revised their policies regarding refugees. These changes were due to more refugees arriving there since the Taliban had come to power in Afghanistan. Most of the refugees were forcibly deported by Pakistani militias to Afghanistan. The cost of food, rent of houses and other basic necessities had doubled there. I didn’t have any financial support from anyone. My brother had also been living as a refugee since 2014 in Indonesia and he was not able to support our family. I would have loved to work and support my family, but I didn’t have a permission to work in that environment and couldn’t find any job in that limbo, and it was really hurting me that I couldn’t support my family. We were also hiding from police in Pakistan. If they found us they would send us back to Afghanistan; if we went back to Afghanistan the Taliban regime would kill us as they killed my father.

In Europe alone, the 1951 Convention has provided a framework for the protection of millions of refugees, guaranteeing them not only safety but also the social and economic rights necessary to start new lives. However, the human rights agenda out of which UNHCR was born, and on which we depend, is increasingly coming under strain. The global economic crisis brought with it a populist wave of anti-foreigner sentiment, albeit often couched in terms of national sovereignty and national security. At the same time, the changing nature of armed conflict is increasingly limiting the space for humanitarian action.

European immigration policies since the Second World War have reflected a reluctance towards immigration among European countries, which have become migration destination countries “largely unintentionally and reactively, and often against the explicit will of sizable parts of both the political elite and the native population” (Koopmans 2005: 5). Contemporary research on migration, border regimes, and refugee movements in Europe has critically analysed the current policies and practices affecting the rights of migrants and persons with refugee experience in Europe (Hess & Schmidt-Sembdner 2021). Furthermore, historical research on European migration has highlighted how concerns regarding the control over mobility have always been linked to struggles over labour control and public anxieties about “uncontrolled masses”, leading to the racialization of immigration as well as the intersection of race, ethnicity, or religion with socioeconomic and legal status (Anderson 2013). This historical development is reflected in current right-wing and populist attempts at othering and dehumanizing migrants and persons with refugee experience, which are having a detrimental impact on immigration policies across Europe (Nowak & Razum 2022).

The following letter to the editor appeared on 27 January 2019 in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel:

Try to guess who I am! I am more in the media than Donald Trump and his tweets, Erdogan and his democracy, Putin and his politics. I was the main reason for the failure to form a government in Germany and for the rise of the right in Europe. I am the great concern of many citizens in this country, because I am more dangerous than poverty in old age, abuse in families, environmental pollution, drug use, climate change, lack of carers and educators. I am the one who always feels guilty for the mistakes of other people. People they don’t even know. I am the one who is always ashamed to greet neighbours when something happens again somewhere. I’m liable for everyone’s mistakes and feel threatened by every report in the media.

Did you recognise me? I am the refugees! And it’s not a grammatical error due to a lack of knowledge of German. I am the refugees! And I mean all refugees. I’m not a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a journalist, an artist, a salesperson, a taxi driver or a teacher – I’m the refugees. Although I come from a small town in Syria and the people in Damascus were already foreign to me, since I have been in Europe, I have become one of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Africa. Although we speak different languages, have different religions and pasts, not to mention different world views and opinions. But who cares about such differences, we are all refugees in the end. I lost friends and relatives, my flat, my job, my car, my past and my home because of the war. But one loss that I only felt later was my individuality, which I left behind on the rubber dinghy at the borders of Europe (Gouma 2019: own translation into English).

It was written by Syrian lawyer, Vinda Gouma, who now works as a legal researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights.

It is essential that health professionals relate to persons with refugee experience as fellow human beings, despite the persistence of racist and xenophobic discourses, which have been shown to have a negative impact on clinicians by creating biases that compromise the quality of care (Rousseau et al. 2017). Recent studies point to a correlation between negative attitudes and agreement on restricting access to healthcare for persons with refugee experience (Vanthuyne et al. 2013; Rousseau et al. 2017). On the other hand, positive attitudes correlate with greater agreement with maintaining or expanding access to healthcare for persons with refugee experience, based on arguments such as compassion, recognition of the legality of refugee status, the increased cost of delayed provision of health services, and the recognition of persons with refugee experience as future citizens and access to healthcare as a fundamental human right (Rousseau et al. 2017).

While the right to health for all, including persons with refugee experience, is promoted by international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization as an effective approach to improving individual and societal well-being globally, national governments are exacerbating existing health disparities by introducing different levels of healthcare coverage that negatively affect migrants with precarious status and persons with refugee experience (Rousseau et al. 2017). This warrants strong criticism, as empirical research has documented the negative impact of these policy changes not only on those excluded from mainstream healthcare services, but also on overall health expenditure (Bozorgmehr & Razum 2015).

Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease. (Naguib Mahfouz)

Anderson, Bridget. 2013. Us vs. Them? The Danger Politics of Immigration Control (Oxford: Oxford Academic).