Occasional Paper #8:OP:3
by Alan Dowty and Gilburt Loescher

    
Large-scale movement of people across national borders, under duress, internationalizes what would otherwise be domestic issues. This has become an international norm, in both theory and practice, that is increasingly accepted as grounds for international action against the state generating the refugee flow. This is based on three specific arguments. First, deriving a right of international intervention from the imposition of a refugee burden is a reasonable extension of customary law. Secondly, as a threat to peace and security, such imposition falls under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and therefore legitimates enforcement action not subject to the limits of purely humanitarian intervention. Finally, international intervention in response to refugee flows has become a de facto feature of state declaration and practice in recent years. Refugee issues are of course intertwined in practice with humanitarian considerations, but the connection is not an accidental one that fortuitously justifies international action; rather, the link is organic in that refugees are human rights violations made visible.

 

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