Refugee Dignity in Protracted Exile

Anna Lise Purkey is Summer Course Director and Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, Toronto

• Introduction 1. The Exclusion of Long-term Refugees from the Law: Creating Situations of Protracted Rights-"less"-ness 2. The State-Refugee Fiduciary Relationship: The Legal Obligation to Secure Human Rights-based Capabilities 3. A Challenge to Power: Legal Empowerment as an Enabling Central Capability 4. The Faces of Legal Empowerment in Protracted Refugee Situations 5. Critical Engagement: Adopting a Participatory Approach to Legal Empowerment Conclusion

"Perhaps the greatest failing of the modern refugee regime is that roughly half of the world’s refugees languish in protracted refugee situations, with no solution in sight. Anna Purkey’s important book tackles this failing head-on, rightly insisting that the answer is not continued charity but rather participatory empowerment. Her novel contribution is that international law has a critical role to play in enabling this transition — imposing not just ethical responsibility, but rather real accountability on both states and international agencies to release refugees from the purgatory of ongoing indeterminacy." – James C. Hathaway, Director, Program in Refugee and Asylum Law, University of Michigan Law School"Anna’s book is refreshingly original and unique in re-conceiving approaches to protracted refugeesituations. It takes refugee and human rights law as a starting point. Through a combination of legaland development theories it argues clearly and concisely for an empowerment approach, thus highlighting the imbalance of power dynamics in refugee situations." – Professor Susan KneeboneProfessional Fellow and Associate, Asian Law Centre, Melbourne Law School"Two-thirds of the world’s refugees are in situations of prolonged exile. The average duration of a refugee situation now surpassing 20 years. This book makes a significant contribution to debates on how to respond to these trends by challenging the exclusive emphasis on the economic empowerment of refugees in situations of prolonged exile. By arguing for the importance of legal empowerment as a precondition for solutions, this book lays a significant foundation for new directions for research, policy and practice. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand and resolve protracted refugee situations."—James Milner, Associate Professor of Political Science, Carleton University