International responses / Comment
The false panacea of offshore deterrence
12/04/2006 By James Hathaway
Time and again, governments take often shockingly blunt action to deter refugees and other migrants found on the high seas, in their island territories, and in overseas enclaves. They act in ways they would never consider appropriate in their home territory.
There is a pervasive belief that when deterrence is conducted at arms-length
from the homeland, it is either legitimate or, at the very least, immune from legal
accountability.
Perhaps most notoriously, the United States in the early 1990s not only interdicted thousands of Haitians fleeing the murderous Cedrás dictatorship on the high seas, but forced the asylum-seekers to board its Coast Guard vessels, destroyed their boats, and delivered them directly into the arms of their persecutors.
While current practice is to conduct a cursory review of protection needs onboard the intercepting ship, the United States still maintains that it has no legal obligation to interdicted refugees, even if they manage to reach its territorial sea.
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Keywords
Civil society Human rights PovertyBio author: James Hathaway
J.S.D. and LL.M. at Columbia University, and an LL.B. (Honours) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. A leading authority on international refugee law, James C. Hathaway is James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law; Director of the Refugee and Asylum Law Programme at the University of Michigan; and Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Programme. Professor Hathaway established and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (www.refugeecaselaw.org), and is an editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports. His main areas of research are Human Rights, International and Comparative Law, Public Interest Law, and Refugee and Asylum Law.
