Panel: Refugee regimes in the Global South and their impacts on refugees

Abstract

According to the UNHCR there are more than 3.5 million refugees worldwide, and more than 80% of them are hosted in the Global South. Although armed conflicts and climate change have increased the flow of South-South migration, the phenomenon of South-South migration remains under-studied and the plight of refugees in the South is often rendered invisible.

Countries in the Global South have different policies and procedures to manage refugees. For instance, some countries like Uganda do not require entry request visas for refugees, whereas countries like Egypt do not allow refugees to enter their territories without visas. Some countries accommodate refugees in camps, while others do not. Some individual member states hosting refugees are keen to apply the Geneva Convention to accommodate and support refugees, whereas others fail to apply or ignore the Convention and deny refugees their rights as stated in the Convention. In such diverse/different policies and practices how do refugees mange to survive and to (dis)integrate? What alternative do refugees have to survive under such regimes?

The panel aims to discuss theoretical and empirical issues of policies and procedures adapted by countries in the Global South in responding to the increasing exodus of refugees. It explores the relevance (or irrelevance) of these policies and procedures to the international and regional refugee conventions and highlights gaps in their protection and provision systems, with case studies from the Global South showing the impact of different refugee regimes on refugees.

in-person event