Emma Larking

We Refugees is the third anthology in a series designed to spark conversation, promote awareness, and generate funds to advance social justice and amplify the voices of the marginalized. Rather than the vision of crisis so often portrayed in the media, the poems, essays, and personal reflections in We Refugees are moving accounts of individual suffering and fortitude; demonstrations of the great willingness shared by many to bridge cultural divides and offer hope and healing; and celebrations of the courage of people who have been forced to leave their homes and seek new ones. The contributors are Kirsty Anantharajah, Jennifer deBie, Nina Foushee, Robbie Gamble, Akuol Garang, Sharif Gemie, Steven Jakobi, Enesa Mahmic, Loretta Oleck, Virginia Ryan, Judith Skillman, and Mitchell Toews. Pact Press is proud, through the sale of this anthology, to support the work of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), which advocates for, empowers, and provides material support to people seeking asylum.

We Refugees

Most Western liberal democracies are parties to the United Nations Refugees Convention and all are committed to the recognition of basic human rights, but they also spend billions fortifying their borders, detaining unauthorised immigrants, and policing migration. Meanwhile, public debate over the West’s obligations to unauthorised immigrants is passionate, vitriolic, and divisive. Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights combines philosophical, historical, and legal analysis to clarify the key concepts at stake in the debate, and to demonstrate the threat posed by contemporary border regimes to rights protection and the rule of law within liberal democracies. Using the political philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel Kant the book highlights the tension in liberalism between partiality towards one’s compatriots and the universalism of human rights and brings this tension to life through an examination of Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise and decline of the modern nation-state. It provides a novel reading of Arendt’s critique of human rights and her concept of the right to have rights. The book argues that the right to have rights must be secured globally in limited form, but that recognition of its significance should spur expansive changes to border policy within and between liberal states.

Life Outside the Pale of the Law

Refugees and the Myth of Human Rights

Hilary Charlesworth

A sustained analysis of the Universal Periodic Review of human rights, focusing on its rituals and potential ritualism.

Human Rights and the Universal Periodic Review

The Universal Periodic Review is an intriguing and ambitious development in human rights monitoring which breaks new ground by engaging all 193 members of the United Nations. This book provides the first sustained analysis of the Review and explains how the Review functions within the architecture of the United Nations. It draws on socio-legal scholarship and the insights of human rights practitioners with direct experience of the Review in order to consider its regulatory power and its capacity to influence the behaviour of states. It also highlights the significance of the embodied features of the Review, with its cyclical and intricately managed interactive dialogues. Additionally, it discusses the rituals associated with the Review, examines the tendency of the Review towards hollow ritualism (which undermines its aspiration to address human rights violations comprehensively) and suggests how this ritualism might be overcome.

Emma Larking

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