In a recently published report, two academics from Oxford University have come up with the term “survival migrants” to accommodate groups who do not fall within the legal refugee definition in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Dr. Alexander Betts and his co-author Esra Kaytaz say that “survival migrants” are described as “forced migrants who are not eligible for the legal protection afforded by refugee status, but who nevertheless flee an existential threat to which they have no domestic recourse.” In his , Betts writes that sources of survival migration are likely to proliferate in the context of climate change and the transmission of the global economic meltdown. Yet both are not directly recognized in any existing convention.
In the report, the authors focus on a case study of Zimbabweans living in South Africa and Botswana. An estimated 2 million Zimbabweans have fled their country since 2005 – for many, resorting to the only available means of survival, Betts says (AlertNet.org).
According to Betts, only 10 percent of those Zimbabweans arriving in South Africa have been officially recognised as refugees. “The majority of Zimbabwean migrants – like an increasing number of migrants elsewhere in the world – have been forced to flee a combination of state failure, severe environmental distress, or widespread livelihood collapse, rather than as individuals fleeing political persecution as required by international refugee law.” Because of this, they have received limited legal protection and are extremely susceptible to poverty, harassment, and xenophobic attacks in South Africa and Botswana.
Although Betts admits it would be difficult to get states to endorse “survival migration” as a legal definition, he notes the success of protection regimes of people who are forced to migrate within their own borders, particularly the United Nations “soft law” document “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement”, which was drafted in 1998. An attempt to address the needs of survival migrants could drawn upon this document.
“There are a number of reasons to be optimistic,” Betts said. “The new realities of forced migration – climate change, livelihood collapse, state collapse – underpin the fact that the definition of refugee under the 1951 convention is not adequate. There’s a growing acceptance that something needs to be done to supplement the convention.”
The paper, entitled “National and international responses to the Zimbabwean exodus: implications for the refugee protection regime”, will be available online on the UNHCR website in the coming weeks.
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Related Links:
“Time to redefine refugees as ‘survival migrants’?” – Reuters AlertNet (July 2009)
“Definition of a refugee needs updating, report tells United Nations” – University of Oxford
– The GEGblog
An interesting concept worth exploring in the context of negotiations to reform the 1951 Convention. I also note that the authors recognise the need to extend the provision under the Convention (as interpreted by most States) to require asylum seekers to exhaust options of internal flight before being granted refugee status.
Nevertheless, this should be explored in the context of the need to update the Convention itself. In their treatment of the definition of ‘refugee’, States have responded well to extend the terms beyond what was originally envisaged by the contracting States – individuals fleeing repression based upon political views or ethnic origin, etc – through the expansion of the interpretation of ‘social group’ to include women suffering repression, gay communities and so on. The difficulty with the Convention, rather, lies with the obligation on contracting States to take *any* genuine refugee, rather than allowing a more equitable distribution. Whether such a policy of distribution of refugees according to States’ populations would be practical is another matter, but the current Convention creates a hugely disproportionate effect on certain States – especially those (such as Kenya and South Africa) neighbouring failed States (cf Somalia), famine (Ethiopia, historically) or prolonged war (DRC); and also States which are particularly attractive to migrants because of their standard of living and language (cf the United Kingdom).
So an idea worth pursuing but one which must be explored in the context of a fundamental reform of the 1951 Convention.
Francis Hoar, London (barrister practising in Immigration law)