Legal Refugee Recognition in the Urban South: Formal v. de Facto Refugee Status
The legal relevance of the “urban refugee” concept in the Middle East and Africa stems from the practice of practicing different forms of refugee status determination (RSD) in rural as opposed to urban areas. Urban refugees are usually subject to rigorous individual adjudication, while rural refugees are typically recognized on a prima facie basis. This difference in procedure has no basis in the substance of refugee law, and it marginalizes urban refugees in two key ways. First, in Africa and the Middle East, refugee status recognition is used by host governments to prevent refugee integration, to force refugees to live far from population centres, and to transfer responsibility for their welfare to international agencies. Second, individualized RSD procedures in wide use by the United Nations generally lack key fairness safeguards, increasing the risk that genuine refugees will be wrongfully rejected. This phenomenon means that urban refugee populations will often be systematically undercounted, and will include a significant number of de facto refugees who are in fact refugees in danger of refoulement, but whose applications were rejected and who thus have no access to the protection and resources otherwise targeted at refugees.
The Struggle for Protection of the Rights of Refugees and IDPs in Africa: Making the Existing International Legal Regime Work
This paper focuses on the role that international human rights law, policy, and domestic legislation play in the protection of the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons in situations of civil war and ethnic conflict. I draw conclusions from my research experiences with refugees from the East African region,' which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people. Broadly, international human rights law provides for those rights that should be enjoyed by every individual in order to lead a decent life. These human rights apply to all situations, whether during peacetime or war, and they apply regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, citizenship, language, sexual orientation, and physical or mental abilities. In this paper I argue that the existing international legal framework provides sufficient protection to all the victims of forced migration, both refugees and internally displaced persons. What is lacking in this framework is the ability of all key players to learn from past mistakes and the political will to use the available legal mechanisms in a way that can optimally protect them. Second, I argue that the staff members of many institutions, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), are not sufficiently competent to
Pioneer 10 Observations of the Ultraviolet Glow in the Vicinity of Jupiter
A two-channel ultraviolet photometer aboard Pioneer 10 has made several observations of the ultraviolet glow in the wavelength range from 170 to 1400 angstroms in the vicinity of Jupiter. Preliminary results indicate a Jovian hydrogen (1216 angstrom) glow with a brightness of about 1000 rayleighs and a helium (584 angstrom) glow with a brightness of about 10 to 20 rayleighs. In addition, Jupiter appears to have an extensive hydrogen torus surrounding it in the orbital plane of Io. The mean diameter of the torus is about equal to the diameter of the orbit of Io. Several observations of the Galilean satellites have also occurred but only a rather striking Io observation has been analyzed to date. If the observed Io glow is predominantly that of Lyman-α, the surface brightness is about 10,000 rayleighs.