Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law

Biennially, the Program in Refugee Law hosts a Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law. Leading academic experts are invited to Ann Arbor in order to develop an intellectual framework for resolution of a significant problem facing international refugee law. The purpose of the Colloquium is to tackle a single, cutting-edge concern via preparatory study and a two-day debate and policy formulation meeting. Students are actively involved in the drafting of background research for the meeting, and participate as colleagues with the invited experts.

The fifth Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law will convene November 13–15, 2009, at the University of Michigan Law School. This colloquium will address the right to work for refugees and asylum seekers in the country of arrival. Experts attending include Kees Wouters (UNHCR), Ryszard Cholewinski (IOM, attending in a personal capacity), Professor Jonathan Klaaren (University of Witwatersrand), Professor Kate Jastram (UC Berkeley), Professor Matthew Craven (Dean, School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London), Ms. Alice Edwards (University of Nottingham), Dr. Bernard Ryan (University of Kent), and Mr. Adam Weiss (The AIRE Centre). The colloquium will benefit enormously from these experts' combined depth and breadth of experience across the fields of refugee law, human rights law, and labor law in academia, non-governmental organizations and inter-governmental organizations. These experts, alongside some of our best refugee law students, will work throughout the entire weekend toward the adoption of the fifth set of Michigan Guidelines on the International Protection of Refugees.

The fourth and most recent Colloquium was convened November 10–12, 2006. Moving for the first time away from study of the refugee definition, participants debated the legality of rules and policies which provide that a refugee's protection needs are to be considered or addressed somewhere other than in the territory of the state where the refugee has sought, or intends to seek, protection. Such policies—including "country of first arrival," "safe third country," and extraterritorial processing rules and practices—were examined from the optic of enhancing the flexibility of the protection regime without compromising the entitlements of refugees. The meeting issued the Michigan Guidelines on Protection Elsewhere to define the minimum international legal requirements for the lawful implementation of protection elsewhere policies as well as desirable procedural standards to ensure respect for such legal obligations. The Colloquium's deliberations were based on a study authored by Rapporteur Michelle Foster, "Protection Elsewhere: The Legal Implications of Requiring Refugees to Seek Protection in Another State".

The third Colloquium convened in March 2004. Participating legal scholars included Jenny Bedlington (Former First Assistant Secretary in Australia's Immigration Department), Ryan Goodman (Harvard Law School), Kay Hailbronner (Department of Public International Law, University of Konstanz, Germany), Rodger Haines (Deputy Chairperson of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority, New Zealand), Stephen Legomsky (Washington University School of Law), Pene Mathew (Australian National University Law School, Canberra), Gregor Noll (University of Lund, Sweden), and Catherine Phuong (University of Newcastle Law School, United Kingdom).

During this colloquium the group considered the meaning of the "well-founded fear" clause of the refugee definition, in particular whether it requires a purely objective test of risk or compels consideration in part of the subjective apprehensions of the refugee claimant. The result of their research and deliberations are the Michigan Guidelines on Well-Founded Fear.

The second colloquium was held March 2001. Participating legal scholars included T. Alexander Aleinikoff (Georgetown University Law Center), Catherine Dauvergne (University of Sydney, Australia), Suzanne Egan (National University of Ireland, Dublin), Rodger Haines (Deputy Chairperson of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority, New Zealand), Walter Kälin (University of Bern, Switzerland), and Volker Türk (UNCHR’s Department of International Protection, Geneva, Switzerland).

The subject of the 2001 Colloquium was the limitation of refugee status to persons able to show that their fear of persecution is "for reasons of" race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. The result of their research and deliberations are the Michigan Guidelines on Nexus to a Convention Ground.

The first Colloquium, convened in 1999, drafted the Michigan Guidelines on the Internal Protection Alternative.