Ask Amnesty

From Susan, Muncie, IN:

How is Jordan assessing the status of Iraqi refugees? According to international human rights laws, must Jordan return suspected Ba'ath party members to Iraq within a reasonable time to face justice according to international law? What about distinguishing legitimate refugees who are fleeing unfair discrimination or destroyed homes? What kind of political pressure and humanitarian aid from the United States and Britain can AI ask for to resolve a refugee crisis rather than adding to it?

From Peter, Providence, RI:

What is the refugee and displaced persons situation? The US claims that the foreseen refugee crisis hasn't materialized. How many refugees are there, where are they, and what is their condition?

International USA's Refugee Program Director Bill Frelick responds. Bill Frelick served as a delegate on an Amnesty International mission to Iraq in late April/early May 2003. In addition to visiting the POW/civilian internee camp at Umm Qasr and searching for hidden detention centers, Frelick assessed humanitarian conditions and the delivery of humanitarian aid.

I'll try to answer these two sets of questions together, taking Peter's first. Although the war and its immediate aftermath did not produce a mass refugee exodus comparable to what Iraq experienced in 1991, we have recently seen a great deal of internal movement occurring "below the radar," so to speak. We saw squatters taking over virtually every former public building and property in Basra, including bombed out, burned and looted buildings. The walls of such properties are festooned with graffiti making claims, such as "private family lives here." In the absence of any assurances to Iraqi displaced people that their right to return to their homes will be respected, they are now beginning to move spontaneously, and in some cases, are taking the law into their own hands. We learned of cases where displaced people had sent warnings to the current occupants to leave their homes; some left under the threat of violence. It's virtually impossible to put a number on the internally displaced who are on the move, especially since they are intermixed with poor people who were not previously forced out of their homes who are taking the opportunity of generalized lawlessness to try to grab properties in the hope of marginally improving their lives.

Among the most vulnerable today are foreign residents, including Iranian refugees, Syrians, and tens of thousands of Palestinians, whom the Ba'athists had placed in the homes of forced out dissidents. Many of them are now homeless, frightened and destitute. About 1,000 of them have moved to the Jordanian border to seek asylum in Jordan. They have been rebuffed, however, and are staying in a no-man's land between Iraq and Jordan's al-Karama border crossing. Amnesty International has called upon the Jordanian authorities to allow those at the border entry into the country so that their entitlement to international protection can be ascertained, or in order to ensure their safe transfer to their countries of residence.

Susan also poses one of the toughest questions in the refugee field. How do refugee law and human rights instruments regard possible torturers and other persecutors who claim to be refugees? The 1951 Refugee Convention itself has an "exclusion clause," which disallows certain categories of persons from the protection of the Convention, including persons who have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes (Article 1F). Amnesty International holds that asylum claimants must first be permitted entry and a fair hearing of their underlying refugee claim (i.e., their claimed fear of being persecuted if returned), and only after having established such a claim should the exclusion clause be considered. Even so, human rights law provides an additional layer of protection. The Convention Against Torture prohibits the return of any person-without exception-to a state where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would be in danger of being tortured (Article 3) and this is generally considered to be a norm of customary international law, i.e. it is binding on states even though they have not ratified the treaty or treaties in which it is set out.

AI maintains that universal jurisdiction applies to persons accused of committing international crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes torture, and that, therefore, such persons should be tried in the country where they have sought asylum or extradited to another country if there is reason to believe that they would be tortured if returned to their country of origin. Amnesty International interprets the principle that a person should not be returned to a country where he or she would likely be tortured to preclude extradition, deportation, or removal of a person to a country that fails to provide basic due process rights to detained or indicted individuals, including standards guaranteeing the right to a fair trial or there would be a risk of the death penalty.

It is worthwhile noting that the mere membership of an organization such as the Ba'ath party or having had a position of in the former Iraqi regime is not in itself be a ground for exclusion. The relevant issue is whether there are there is an individual direct responsibility for, or active association with, the commission of the international crimes.

More information:

• Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
• Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
• The Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction (PDF)