This book offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of refugee protection in Southeast Asia from an international law perspective. It examines both the legal and policy frameworks pertaining to the protection of refugees in the region as well as the countries’ response to refugee movements from the Indochinese refugee crisis in the mid-1970s to the most recent developments. It covers important aspects of refugee protection, such as access to territory, non-refoulement, the treatment of refugees, the concept of refugee as applied in the region, burden-sharing and durable solutions to the plight of refugees. The analysis focuses specifically on the main countries of asylum within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that are not parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention, namely Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Using an international law perspective based on the doctrine of the ‘two elements’ (practice and opinio juris), the author argues that these states have long recognized that people fleeing persecution, armed conflict and generalized violence, namely refugees, should be protected. This in turn demonstrates that they recognize the existence and relevance of the international refugee regime despite their refusal to accede to the Refugee Convention. Offering a different perspective on the links between international refugee law and refugee protection in Southeast Asia, this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of international relations, international refugee law, international human rights law, migration governance and Southeast Asian Studies.

This book examines Southeast Asia's rejection of international refugee law through extensive archival analysis and argues that this rejection was shaped by the region's response to its largest refugee crisis in the post-1945 era: the Indochinese refugee crisis from 1975-1996.

The chapters in this book explore the impact of recent shifts in global and regional power and the subsequent development and enforcement of international refugee protection standards in the Asia Pacific region. Drawing on their expertise across a number of jurisdictions, the contributors assess the challenges confronting the implementation of international law in the region, as well as new opportunities for extending protection norms into national and regional dialogues. The case studies span key jurisdictions across the region and include a comparative analysis with China, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia. This topical and important book raises critical questions for the Asia Pacific region and sheds light on the challenges confronting the protection of refugees and displaced persons in this area. Interdisciplinary in its approach, it will be of interest to academics, researchers, students and policy-makers concerned with the rights and protection of refugees.

An examination of the plight of the refugees of Burma's protracted civil war, many of whom have fled across the border into Thailand. This study looks at the changing nature of the refugee situation and the responses of the parties involved, including the United Nations, the refugees themselves, and governments in both Bangkok and Rangoon. In the process, Fear and Sanctuary addresses pertinent international questions regarding civil war, ethnic resistance against an oppressive state, displacement, and refugee protection.

Despite being long-term hosts to refugee populations, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are not yet part of the 1951 Refugee Convention. In all three states, refugees are regulated as discretionary humanitarian exceptions to immigration legislation. With contributions from scholars within and outside the region, this book promotes new thinking on protection of refugees and on resolving tensions between states, actors and institutions in the region. It evaluates the key concepts of sovereignty, security and humanitarianism in this context, the different bases of protection by state and non-state actors and the meaning of responsibility and regionalism in Southeast Asia.

This collection focuses on regional approaches to refugee protection, and specifically upon the norms, and the norm entrepreneurs of those approaches. It considers how recent crises in refugee protection (such as the Syrian and Andaman Sea crises) have highlighted the strengths and limits of regional approaches to refugee protection and the importance of looking closely at the underlying norms, and the identities and activities of the relevant ‘norm entrepreneurs’ at the regional level. It compares the norms of refugee protection that have evolved in three regions: the EU, Latin America and the South East Asian region, to identify which norms of refugee protection have been ‘internalised’ in the three regional contexts and to contextualise the processes. The authors demonstrate the need for awareness of the roles of different norm ‘entrepreneurs’ such as states, international organisations and civil society, in developing and promoting basic norms on refugee protection. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.