As the previous edition of the International Journal of Refugee Law reported, UNHCR is in the process of organizing a series of expert meetings on the main protection challenges of the 21st Century to mark the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) and the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961 Convention). We will report on each of the roundtables as their outcomes become available.
The fourth meeting in the series focused on the complementarities between international refugee law, international criminal law and international human rights law, and was co-hosted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and held from 11 to 13 April 2011 in Arusha, Tanzania. Participants included 34 experts from 24 countries, drawn from governments, NGOs, academia and international organizations. The meeting led to the issuance of Summary Conclusions, which follow.
The linkages between international criminal law and forced displacement are multifaceted. They range from the very crimes over which international criminal courts have jurisdiction, such as deportation, forcible transfer or persecution as war crimes or crimes against humanity, through to the interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention’s exclusion clauses, which expressly refer to concepts of international criminal law. In procedural terms, questions arise with respect to the weight and relevance of evidence adduced in international criminal proceedings for the purposes of refugee status determination, for instance, or with respect to witness and victim protection.
A number of understandings distilled from the expert meeting are presented here.
First, it was recognized that international refugee law, international criminal law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law are embedded in the broader …
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