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This chapter interrogates the practice of gender-based asylum as a window to the problem of gender-based violence (GBV) as a driver of migration, with a focus on Southeast Europe, reporting on one instance of the intersection between the more private matter of gender and the realms of “high politics.”

The research is based on qualitative methods, primarily drawn from existing (written) sources, including legal cases, government and NGO reports, and other documents, supplemented by information gathered through in-depth interviews.

This research found that the region is a source of migrants escaping GBV, and that migrants from this region have been agents in moving the practice of gender-based asylum forward in recent years. That migration is increasingly multidirectional. Further, the “West” offers gender-based asylum inconsistently.

Political and policy change on these matters across this region were transitioning rapidly when this chapter was written; there will be a need, therefore, for updates based on any new developments.

Policy progress should be based on recognition of Southeast Europe’s varied roles as receiving, transit, and destination countries as the region’s viability and visibility increase.

The chapter analyzes a legal terrain that is rarely done outside of the field of law. It offers the most recent analysis of current developments in gender-based asylum with a Southeast Europe focus. Finally, it contributes empirical research to the evolving theoretical discussions of the privatization of the public sphere, particularly for emerging democracies.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world is experiencing the greatest refugee crisis in recorded history alongside increasingly restrictive limits on asylum seekers and refugees. In 2020, the US administration established a ceiling for refugees of 18,000 people, the lowest number on record, and only 11,814 refugees were admitted to the United States. The Biden administration has expressed commitments to building a coherent asylum and refugee system and quickly reversing recent detrimental policies. But the administration has cautioned how quickly change might occur, given how “agencies and processes…have been so gutted.”¹

2016 to 2020 included an overwhelming series of changes to laws and policies affecting asylum seekers, often with little documented planning or communication, wreaking severe effects on conditions for asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border. These changes had significant consequences for human rights, most notably the linchpin right of access to information. At the US–Mexico border, must the right “to seek, receive and impart information” be fulfilled in order to fulfill the right to asylum?

While information professionals are not expected to be experts in law, they are experts in understanding the link between access to information and the realization of justice and human rights. This chapter investigates the role of the information professional in the fulfillment of the right to asylum, particularly in the context of contemporary asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border, volatile information landscapes, and the legal and historical framework in the United States for seeking asylum.

The chapter describes the refugee crisis, its various challenges, and followed by arguments on recognizing refugee qualifications. Key contexts related to refugees including human rights (especially to education and work), access and equity in education and the labor force, and refugee integration into host countries. The Norwegian Quality Assurance Agency’s initiatives on the recognition of refugee qualifications and the establishment of a European Passport for Refugees are presented to highlight the importance of increasing refugee access to further education and entry to the labor force through facilitating recognition of their qualifications.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

Asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants’ access to healthcare vary in South Africa and Cape Town due to unclear legal status. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the source of this variation, the divergence between the 1996 South African Constitution, the immigration laws, and regulations and to describe its harmful consequences.

Based on legal and ethnographic research, this paper documents the disjuncture between South African statutes and regulations and the South African Constitution regarding refugees and migrants’ access to healthcare. Research involved examining South African jurisprudence, the African Charter, and United Nations’ materials regarding rights to health and health care access, and speaking with civil society organizations and healthcare providers. These sources inform the description of the immigrant access to healthcare in Cape Town, South Africa.

Asylum-seekers and refugees are entitled to health and emergency care; however, hospital administrators require documentation (up-to-date permits) before care can be administered. Many immigrants – especially the undocumented – are often unable to obtain care because of a lack of papers or because of “progressive realization,” the notion that the state cannot presently afford to provide treatment in accordance with constitutional rights. These explanations have put healthcare providers in an untenable position of not being able to treat patients, including some who face fatal conditions.

The research is limited by the fact that South African courts have not adjudicated a direct challenge to being refused care at healthcare facility on the basis of legal status. This limits the ability to know how rights afforded to “everyone” within the South African Constitution will be interpreted with respect to immigrants seeking healthcare. The research is also limited by the non-circulation of healthcare admissions policies among leading facilities in the Cape Town region where the case study is based.

Articulation of the disjuncture between the South African Constitution and the immigration laws and regulations allows stakeholders and decision-makers to reframe provincial and municipal policies about healthcare access in terms of constitutional rights and the practical limitations accommodated through progressive realization.

In South Africa, immigration statutes and regulations are inconsistent and deemed unconstitutional with respect to the treatment of undocumented migrants. Hospital administrators are narrowly interpreting the laws to instruct healthcare providers on how to treat patients and whom they can treat. These practices need to stop. Access to healthcare must be structured to comport with the constitutional right afforded to everyone, and with progressive realization pursued through a non – discriminatory policy regarding vulnerable immigrants.

This paper presents a unique case study that combines legal and social science methods to explore a common and acute question of health care access. The case is novel and instructive insofar as South Africa has not established refugee camps in response to rising numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. South Africans thus confront a “first world” question of equitable access to healthcare within their African context and with limited resources in a climate of increasing xenophobia.

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.

Recent invasions, coups, civil wars, and ethnic crusades have caused many individuals and families around the world to flee their homelands for fear of their own safety. The exodus of refugees to foreign nations causes a strain on those nations’ health care systems and resources. With the assistance of outside organizations, these countries can develop a health care management system for refugees that provides for both their immediate survival and long-term health stability, while preserving critical national resources. This chapter reviews the refugee problem and presents the short-term tactics and long-term strategies undertaken by seven very different national governments to care for the refugees that cross their borders. A model of a sound health care management system is used to incorporate the best practices of each country into a framework for approaching this multi-billion dollar issue.

In this chapter, the author has described the nexus between climate change and the evolution of refugee problems. The concept of climate refugee and the controversy between refugee and climate refugee were extensively elaborated. The estimates of climate refugees under various dimensions in different parts of the world were exemplified with statistical figures. The solutions of the refugee problems, funding, directions of estimates and social responsibilities towards refugees are described in the activities of international institutions like UNHCR, CCDO, UNFCCC, IPCC, the Red Cross and many others. The chapter also highlights some important policy issues such as charters, funds, response strategy to disaster and disaster recovery plans, support capacity building and climate change adaptation and so on and also cited policies taken by the G20 summit to care for refugees. Besides, the recommendations of COP23 were also included. In conclusion, ‘no climate change, no climate refugees’ slogan is incorporated with suggestions of taking care of sizable percentage shares of refugees by the rich nations.

This paper argues that intersectionality ought to be a vital tool to identify and recognise those who are refugees. It provides a useful way to distinguish refugees from migrants as well as making it possible to screen for asylum seekers who are at greater risk of experiencing specific vulnerable situations, such as sexual and gender-based violence. This study therefore argues that intersectionality is useful for risk assessment processes as well as for triggering special protection mechanisms.

This research article draws from a cross-cultural empirical study conducted in Greece, Uganda, and Israel on problems asylum seekers and refugees face in host countries.

It is argued that while it is important to identify and screen for asylum seekers who have survived or are at greater risk of experiencing sexual and gender-based violence to provide special protection, it may lead to what has been called a “categorical fetishism”, in this case, applied to vulnerability. Such stigmatising and disempowering perceptions of refugees and their experiences may lead to the view that there are “good” refugees and asylum seekers who are worthy of protection, as opposed to “others”.

This original empirical article provides a new way of examining issues of refugee status determination to ensure fairer ways of doing so.

In 2015, Europe faced an unprecedented inflow of refugees and migrants. Political instability at the continent's peripheries contributed to an accumulative exodus. This resulted in large immigration waves fleeing mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as from other North African countries. Europe was confronted with an increasing number of asylum applications and had to accommodate over a million people (Clayton, 2015). The crisis in Europe has been framed both as a migration crisis and as a crisis within the European Union (EU). The Dublin Regulation, of 2013, requires only one Member state to process the asylum applications. During the pressing period of 2015, the notion of responsibility sharing resulted in heated debates between South and Central and Eastern European states. Several countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary expressed openly antimigrant opinions, which resulted in even more confusion and mismanagement of the migration crisis in the EU. Analyzing the crisis from the macro, meso and micro level, it was evident that the crisis was multifaceted.