The Dictionary of Human Geography

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emphasis on persecution based on civil and

political status as grounds for refugee status

expresses the particularideologicaldebates

of postwar European politics, particularly the

perceived threats ofcommunismand another

holocaust. In emphasizing civil and political

rights, the Convention has had the effect of

minimizing the importance of other rights.

The European geographical focus and

emphasis on civil and political rights in the

Convention have generated an exclusionary

geography of asylum that is the source of

contentious contemporary debate (Hyndman,

2000).

The Convention definition implicitly cre-

ates a hierarchy ofrights, privileging political

and civil rights of protection frompersecution

over economic, cultural and social rights and

scales of violence broader than individual per-

secution. The definition was also an expres-

sion of Cold War geopolitics, grounded in

relational identities of communist East and

capitalist West. Notwithstanding the objec-

tions of several delegates from developing

countries faced with responsibility for their

own refugee populations, the goal of the

Western states was achieved by limiting the

scope of mandatory international protection

under the Convention to refugees whose flight

was prompted by an event within Europe

before 1951. While states might opt to extend

protection to refugees from other parts of the

world, the definition adopted was intended to

distribute the European refugee burden with-

out any binding obligation to reciprocate by

way of the establishment of rights for, or

the provision of assistance to, non-European

refugees.

The 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of

Refugees amended the 1951 Convention.

While it rescinded the spatial and temporal

restrictions of the Convention by lifting

the Europe-based, pre-1951 stipulations, it

merely created equal access for all member

nations to a legal instrument that remained

substantively Eurocentric in focus. Inafrica,

the perceived inadequacy of this pair of legal

instruments resulted in the drafting of a legally

binding regional policy by the Organization

for African Unity (OAU). The 1969 OAU

Convention Governing the Specific Aspects

of Refugee Problems in Africa not only broa-

dened but also reformulated the definition

of refugee. It included the 1951 Convention

definition, but added the provision that gener-

alized violence associated withcolonialism

and other kinds of aggression as grounds for

seeking asylum.

In 1966, two legally bindinghuman rights

instruments were created to protect civil and

political rights, on the one hand, and economic,

social and cultural rights on the other. The

International Covenant on Civil and Political

Rights most closely expresses the emphasis of

the Convention. It ensures respect for demo-

cratic principles and non-discrimination. The

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights includes provisions that are more

applicable to developing countries than to highly

industrialized ones, such as the right tofood,

shelter, and basic medical and educational

services. While the first covenant applies to indi-

viduals, the second refers to particular groups of

people.

In recent years, human geographers have

generated a considerable body of work on the

subject of refugees, probing thegeopolitics

that displace them (Le Billon, 2008), the

governance/governmentality of international

humanitarian assistance that assists refugees

and manages their mobility (Hyndman, 2000),

and the politics of resettlement in a new country

(Black and Koser, 1999; Dahlman and

O ́Tuathail,2005b).Thosedisplaced byconflict

and threats of persecution, but not across inter-

nationalborders, are referred to asinternally

displaced persons(IDPs). They are conceptually

and politically related to refugees, but are still

technically under the legal protection of their

home governments as nationals (see Brun,

2003). Geographers have been particularly

active in tracing refugee participation in trans-

national political, economic and social circuits

that traverse international borders (Al-Ali and

Koser, 2002; Bailey, Wright, Mountz and

Miyares,2002;Nolin,2006).Anotheremerging

research focus among geographers has been the

tactics of exclusion employed by states of the

globalnorth[including Australia] to keep asy-

lum seekers and other migrants at bay, away

from their sovereign shores on which they could

claim rights to seek asylum and other legal

entitlements: references to the ‘externalization

of asylum’ in Europe and the ‘Pacific Solution’

in Australia represent two cases in point

(Hyndman and Mountz, 2008). Related to

these tactics are geographies of containment in

which displaced persons find themselves

in ‘protracted refugee situations’ (PRS), spend-

ingyearsandsometimesdecadesinlimbo,living

in camps and without legal status. The United

States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

(2008) calls this widespread phenomenon,

which affects more than 8 million refugees,

‘refugee warehousing’. (See alsocamp;excep-

tion, space of.) jh

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_R-new Final Proof page 629 2.4.2009 9:12pm

REFUGEES