Human Rights and the Refugee Definition: Comparative Legal Practice and Theory

Does human rights law help us to define who qualifies as a refugee? If so, then how? These deceptively simple questions sit at the heart of an intense contemporary debate over whether, or how, interpretation of the refugee definition in the Refugee Convention should take account of human rights law. In Human Rights and the Refugee Definition, Burson and Cantor bring a fine-grained comparative perspective to this debate. For the first time, they collect together in one edited volume over a dozen new studies by leading scholars and practitioners that explore in detail how these legal dynamics play out in a range of national and international jurisdictions and in relation to particular thematic challenges in refugee law.

Bruce Burson is a Senior Member of the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal and has issued many of its leading decisions in relation to the Refugee Convention.

David James Cantor, PhD (2010), is a Reader in International Human Rights Law and the Director of the Refugee Law Initiative at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.