Jim Hathaway paints a devastating picture of the human rights violations that result from today’s refugee response system. He positions this side-by-side with the original vision of the Refugee Convention: a world where refugees “lead an independent life”, where they can work and feed their families because they are “integrated in the economic system” of their asylum country.
His conclusion—that we’ve failed to effectively operationalize the Refugee Convention—is virtually inarguable. Then he asks, “What went wrong?”
This is the critical question. While Hathaway suggests a few answers, I believe the exclusion of a critical set of actors—those fundamentally able to and interested in holding their governments accountable to human rights standards—has led to this sharp divide between the Convention’s vision and the reality of refugee lives today.
