Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen

The Right to Seek Revisited: On the UN Human Rights Declaration Article 14 and Access to Asylum Procedures in the EU

Th is article compares the “right to seek and enjoy asylum” enshrined in Art. 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the current EU policy developments to “externalize” or “extraterritorialise” migration control and refugee protection. Examining the genesis of Art. 14 during the negotiations of the Universal Declaration, it is argued that while Art. 14 clearly falls short of granting a substantive right to be granted asylum, its formulation was intended to maintain a procedural right – the right to an asylum process. While the Universal Declaration is not a legally binding instrument, going back to the fundamental norms expressed herein nonetheless provides an important starting point for evaluating current policies, especially in light of recent critiques against overly expansive interpretation of human rights law. As such, the article concludes that the current EU policies to shift migration control and refugee protection away from Europe in important respects contravenes “the right to seek asylum” as it was conceived exactly 60 years ago.

An Introduction to Sovereignty Games

Baha Mousa was working as a receptionist at the Haitham Hotel in Basra. On the morning of September 14, 2003, he was detained by British soldiers as they suspected the hotel was used as storage for hiding illegal weapons. Mr. Mousa was taken to a nearby military base where he was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques and brutally beaten until he died from his injuries on the following evening.

Epilogue : Three Layers of a Contested Concept

Closing our pursuit of sovereignty games we hope to have sketched a number of both theoretical and practical examples for others to add additional illustrations and perspectives. Throughout the volume, we have argued for the emergence of new and the return of old games in which sovereignty, or claims to sovereignty, have been instrumentalized by states and other players for a multitude of purposes. In the analysis of both vertical and horizontal sovereignty games, we have demonstrated how new scenarios may be emerging, rules twisted, and new moves contemplated. The majority of the chapters have thus been devoted to analyzing the implications of these sovereignty games for the world we live in.

The Perfect Storm: Sovereignty Games and the Law and Politics of Boat Migration

4.690 migrants have lost their lives in the Mediterranean this year, making 2016 once again set a tragic record and the Mediterranean account for more than three fourths of all registered migrant casualties worldwide. In his most recent book chapter, “The Perfect Storm: Sovereignty Games and the Law and Politics of Boat Migration”, Research Director and Professor Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen argues that the current inability to adequately address the plight of boat migrants may perhaps best be understood as an instance of “the perfect storm”, ie. a confluence of circumstances that in their su, aggravate a given state of affairs dramatically. Both in political and in legal terms, the boat migrant is caught in several inter-related dynamics, all linked to the way that different states re-interpret and instrumentalise sovereign power and responsibility today. (Less)