Divided into three thematic parts to guide the reader, this important volume documents the development and implementation of refugee policy in South Africa over a 10-year period from 1996 until 2006. In doing so, it addresses issues of detention, gender, children and health as well as welfare policies for refugees. The contributions, all written by academics and practitioners of refugee protection, vividly illustrate the tangible shifts and concerns of a process that is not only aimed at establishing policies and legislation but also practices concerning refugees.

This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts. Part One analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Conventions drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and complementary relationships between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter. Part Two focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa.

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony. Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate. Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.

Building on global interest in migration development, the volume draws attention to one of the most important migration systems in sub-Saharan Africa. It reviews South Africa’s approach to international migration in the post-apartheid period from a regional development perspective, highlighting key policy issues, debates, and consequences. The authors find at least three areas where migration is resulting in important development impacts. First, by offering options to those affected by conflict and crises in a region that has limited formal disaster management and social protection systems. Second, by mitigating shortcomings and distortions in regional labour markets. Third, by providing support to struggling rural economies and ever expanding urban areas in terms of livelihoods and social capital transfers. Chapter One consists of a study of the country’s historical experience of migration and, in particular, analyses the changes in official attitudes throughout the twentieth century, indicating the roots of contemporary ideas and policy dilemmas. Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five complement this analysis of the South African State’s capacity to reform and manage the South African migration situation by looking at often neglected dimensions: the first explores the question of skilled labour, a crucial question given the unbalanced structure of the South African labour market; the second examines the impact of migration on local government in South African cities and specifically implications for urban planning, service delivery, health, security, and political accountability; the third analyses the nature of undocumented migration to South Africa and the challenges it raises to both State and non-State actors; The book concludes with an examination of health as a critical issue when examining the relationship between migration and development in South Africa, in light of recent empirical data.

The impact of violence and conflict on refugee status determination and international protection is a key developing field. Given the contemporary dynamics of armed conflict, how to interpret and apply the refugee definitions at global and regional levels is increasingly relevant to governmental policy-makers, decision-makers, legal practitioners, academics and students. This book will provide a comprehensive analysis of the global and regional refugee instruments as they apply to claimants in flight from situations of armed violence and conflict, exploring their interrelationship and how they are interpreted and applied (or should be applied). As part of a broader United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees project to develop guidelines on the interpretation and application of international refugee law instruments to claimants fleeing armed conflict and other situations of violence, it includes contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in this field as well as emerging authors with specific expertise.