Did you know that of the world's 12 million refugees, more than 7 million have been "warehoused"-confined to camps or segregated settlements or otherwise deprived of basic rights-in situations lasting 10 years or more?

Check it out at http://www.refugees.org/warehousing. Refugee protection and assistance does not have to involve spatial confinement and enforced idleness. The 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes refugees right to work and freedom of movement but it's not being applied. So we're mounting a campaign to change that.

Want to join? Attached please find for your wide circulation and endorsement the U.S. Committee for Refugees' organizational "sign-on" Statement against refugee warehousing. Representatives of national and international organizations wishing to endorse the statement should contact Merrill Smith at [email protected] by September 7. The statement was first released in Washington to the U.S. Senate in June and in Geneva to the UNHCR in July and will be released again-with your group's endorsement?-at the UN NGO Conference in New York, September 8-10.

Thanks,

Merrill Smith

U.S. Committee for Refugees

1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 200

Washington DC 20036

202/347-3507

202/347-3418 fax

www.refugees.org

STATEMENT CALLING FOR SOLUTIONS TO END THE WAREHOUSING OF REFUGEES

The 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees provide that persons fleeing persecution across borders deserve international protection, including freedom from forcible return (refoulement) and basic rights necessary for refugees to live a free, dignified, and self-reliant life even while they remain refugees. These rights include the rights to earn a livelihood-to engage in wage-employment, self-employment, the practice of professions, and the ownership of property-freedom of movement and residence, and the issuance of travel documents. These rights are applicable to refugees independently of whether a durable solution, such as voluntary repatriation, third-country resettlement, or naturalization in the country of first asylum, is available. They are part of the protection mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Of the nearly 12 million refugees in the world today, more than 7 million are warehoused, confined to camps or segregated settlements or otherwise deprived of these basic rights, in situations lasting 10 years or more. Warehousing refugees not only violates their rights but also often reduces refugees to enforced idleness, dependency, and despair.

In light of the foregoing, the undersigned:

1. denounce the practice of warehousing refugees as a denial of rights in violation of the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol and call upon the international community, including donor countries, host countries and members of the Executive Committee of UNHCR to do the same;

2. call upon the international community to develop and implement strategies to end the practice of warehousing, including examining how refugee assistance can enable the greater enjoyment of Convention rights;

3. call upon UNHCR to monitor refugee situations more effectively for the realization of all the rights of refugees under the Convention, including those related to freedom of movement and the right to earn a livelihood;

4. call upon those countries that have not yet ratified the Convention or the Protocol to do so;

5. call upon those countries that have ratified the Convention and/or the Protocol but have done so with reservations on key articles pertaining to the right to work and freedom of movement to remove those reservations; and

6. call upon all countries to pass legislation, promulgate policies, and implement programs providing for the full enjoyment of the basic rights of refugees as set forth in the Convention.

Organizations

Action Réfugiés Montréal

American Immigration Lawyers Association

American Refugee Committee International

Amnesty International

Association of Human Rights Activists Bhutan

Boaz Trust (UK)

British Refugee Council

Canadian Council for Refugees

Caritas Sweden

Center for International Policy

Church World Service, Immigration and Refugee Program

Committee in Defence of Democracy and Human Rights

Darfur Organization for Human Rights and Development

Episcopal Migration Ministries

Ethiopian Community Development Council

European Council on Refugees and Exiles

Freedom House

Genocide Watch

Hmong National Development

Hodi (Zambia)

Human Rights First

Human Rights Watch

Immigration and Refugee Services of America

International Catholic Migration Commission

International Journal of Refugee Law

International Refugee Research Institute

International Refugee Rights Initiative

International Rescue Committee

Irish Refugee Council

Jesuit Refugee Service

Kurdish Human Rights Watch

Legal Resources Foundation (Zambia)

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

Lutheran World Relief

Mercy Corps

Organization for Aid to Refugees (Czech Republic)

Physicians for Human Rights

Refugee Consortium of Kenya

Refugee Law Project, Makerere University

Representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile

RESPECT Refugees Ghana

Self-help Initiative for Sustainable Development (Ghana)

South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center

Southeast Asia Resource Action Center

Sudan Emancipation & Preservation Network

U.S. Committee for Refugees

Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children

Notable individuals (affiliations listed for identification only)

Jagdish Bhagwati

Columbia University

The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalization

Copenhagen Consensus participant

Rosemary Byrne

Director, International Process and Justice Project

Trinity College Dublin

The Reader in Refugee Law: Cases, Documents and Materials (editor)

Stephen Castles

Director, Refugee Studies Centre

University of Oxford

The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill

All Souls College, University of Oxford

The Refugee in International Law

Barbara E. Harrell-Bond

Forced Migration and Refugee Studies

American University in Cairo

Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism (forthcoming)

James C. Hathaway

Director, Program in Refugee and Asylum Law

University of Michigan Law School

The Rights of Refugees under International Law

Karen Jacobsen

Director, Refugees & Forced Migration Project

Fletcher School and Feinstein International Famine Center, Tufts University

Tamar Jacoby

Manhattan Institute

Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What it Means to Be American

Gilbert Loescher

International Institute for Strategic Studies

The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path

Stephen Moore

President, Club for Growth
The Economic Consequences of Immigration, 2nd edition (revisor)

Douglass C. North

Washington University in St. Louis

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

Nobel Laureate in economics

Copenhagen Consensus participant

Philip Peters

Vice President, Lexington Institute

Eric Reeves

Smith College

Bonaventure Rutinwa

Centre for the Study of Forced Migration

University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Vernon L. Smith

George Mason University

Nobel laureate in economics, Copenhagen Consensus participant