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 Law of Refugee Status
1. Alienage 2. Well-founded fear 3. Serious harm 4. Failure of state protection 5. Nexus to civil or political status 6. Persons no longer needing protection 7. Persons not deserving protection.
The failure of language to communicate
Abstract This study is a data based comparison of U.S.-Iranian culture through Associative Group Analysis. The AGA data was collected among Iranian students in Tehran Universities. The concepts of self, revolution, royalty, politics and country are used to demonstrate the significance of this comparative study. Discussion focuses on the implications of differences in the meaning and interpretation of these concepts for Iranian and American relations.