Reforming Refugee Protection: What role can a 'Compact' play in the development of future International Refugee Law?

Sammanfattning: The Global Compact on Refugees, which is to be adopted in the autumn of 2018, represents an aspiration on the part of the international community towards strengthened solidarity with refugees and affected host countries and is the most ambitious instrument of its kind to date. Indeed, the creation of the Refugee Compact is timely, although perhaps also somewhat surprising in an era of rising populism, increasingly xenophobic electorates and growing security concerns. Precisely because of these reasons, however, an international initiative to cooperate in providing refugee protection becomes all the more important. Can the Refugee Compact reform global refugee protection? This thesis examines what, if any, impact the Global Compact on Refugees is likely to have on the continued development of international refugee law. The analysis consists of three main parts. First, it examines what status may be accorded to the Refugee Compact in relation to international law. As a non-binding instrument concluded between all the 193 UN Member States, it occupies a peculiar space in the international legal arena. It will be argued that the Refugee Compact is forming part of a larger development of international law which is partly moving away from traditional law-making and into a more informal arena, as a result of increased importance of new actors in international policy making. It then goes on to examine what impact the Compact is likely to have on responsibility sharing in international refugee law. It does so by analysing the Compact in the light of current practices and international law, earlier arrangements and scholarly proposals for reform. Third, it examines how the Compact is likely to affect human rights protection of refugees by drawing on three different rights complexes relevant to the Compact, namely: the right of access to asylum, non-penalisation of irregular entry, and the right of access to work. The thesis then concludes by noticing how the Compact, largely due to its rather technical character, is likely to have norm-creating and norm-filling effects on current international refugee law – although not necessarily in a progressive manner.