Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Asia Pacific Region

Angus Francis is the Principal Solicitor at the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service in Brisbane and an Adjunct Professor to the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology. He has taught immigration and refugee law to undergraduate and postgraduate students at various Australian universities for over a decade. His research in the area has been published in a number of refereed journals including the International Journal of Refugee Law, the Immigration and Nationality Law Review, the Melbourne University Law Review, the Australian Journal of Human Rights, the Alternative Law Journal, and the Australian International Law Journal. He has consulted on Australia’s asylum policy to major political parties, international organizations and Senate inquiries, and has worked as a volunteer migration agent and solicitor at the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service (previously SBICLS) on and off since 1990. He was a visiting fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, in 1996-1997 and 2003. His doctoral thesis examining refugee status determination in Australia and other jurisdictions was completed at ANU. Rowena Maguire is a Lecturer in Queensland University of Technology’s Law Faculty and a research affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation research. Rowena’s principal research interests and publications concern international climate and forest regulation and indigenous and community groups rights and responsibilities in connection with environmental management. She teaches law in context, international law and environmental law within the law school at QUT. In addition Rowena has worked on a number of donor-funded consultancy projects designing and delivering environmental training programs for groups from Kenya, China, Vietnam and the Pacific.

• Chapter 1 Shifting Powers: Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Asia Pacific Region, Angus Francis, Rowena Maguire; Chapter 2 Responsibility, Regionalism and Refugees: What Lessons for Australia? 1 This research was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number 120102224). The author also thanks Mr Tristan Harley for reviewing the paper, for additional research and for translation of documents from Spanish., Penelope Mathew; Chapter 3 Civil Society and the Fight for Refugee Rights in the Asia Pacific Region 1 Some parts of this chapter are revised and updated versions of content in S Taylor, ‘Sharing responsibility for asylum seekers and refugees in the Asia Pacific region’ in S. Juss (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Migration Theory and Policy (Ashgate 2013), Savitri Taylor; Chapter 4 The Search for Protection in Southeast Asia, Taya Hunt, Nikola Errington; Chapter 5 Refugee Protection in China: The Issue of Citizenship and Potential Solutions, Liang Shuying; Chapter 6 Prospects for Refugee Rights in Hong Kong: Towards the Legalization and Expansion of Protection from Refoulement, Kelley Loper; Chapter 7 Migration and the Refugee Regime in Malaysia: Implications for a Regional Solution, Amarjit Kaur; Chapter 8 Challenges and Opportunities in Respecting International Refugee Law in Indonesia, Bhatara Ibnu Reza; Chapter 9 Irregular Migration, Refugee Protection and the ‘Malaysian Solution’, Peter Billings, Anthony Cassimatis, Marissa Dooris; Chapter 10 Revisiting the Concept of Protection in International Refugee Law: Implications of the Protracted Refugee Situation on the Thai–Myanmar Border, Akiko Okudaira, Hitoshi Nasu; Chapter 11 Internally Displaced Persons in Northern Thailand: Involuntary Relocation and the Need for Regulation, Photchanat Intaramanon; Chapter 12 The International Regulation of Persons Displaced by Climate Change, Rowena Maguire, Louise Kruger; Chapter 13 Conceptualising Climate-Induced Displacement in Bangladesh, Mostafa Mahmud Naser;

’Asia Pacific is a region of enormous diversity and geo-political complexity, not least in the field of forced migration, including refugee protection. Insights from this timely and useful publication ask important questions as to how States, working together, can better reconcile their competing responsibilities to protect vulnerable people as well as their national interests.’ Richard Towle, UNHCR Regional Representative for Australasia and the Pacific ’This welcome collection provides a much needed overview of protection issues for refugees and displaced persons in the Asia Pacific Region. It will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in understanding how refugee issues in the region impact on the way that Australia responds to them.’ Susan Kneebone, Monash University, Australia and author of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the Rule of Law: Comparative Perspectives ’its true strengths are its breadth and timeliness...highly useful to those looking for a broad, diverse, and timely understanding of protection in the Asia Pacific.’ Journal of Refugee Studies