Asylum and Its Discontents in the United States
World War II left approximately 75 million people dead and up to 20 million displaced. Many of these displaced persons, or DPs, could not return to their countries. Hundreds of thousands were resettled to new homes in Western Europe and the United States. Two years after the war, there were still 850,000+ people living in DP camps. And … Read more
Sexual orientation is all about identity: Are you gay or straight or bi or trans or questioning or something else? It seems that the United Nations has some identity issues of its own when it comes to LGBT rights. This past September, a “traditional values” resolution sponsored by Russia passed in the UN Human Rights … Read more
According to a new United Nations report, 2011 was the worst year for refugees since 2000: 4.3 million people were newly displaced; 800,000 of them fled their countries and became refugees (the remaining people were displaced but did not leave their countries, so they do not meet the definition of “refugee;” rather, they are considered … Read more
A new report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) shows that asylum claims in industrialized countries have increased 20% from 2010 to 2011. The United States continued to receive the most asylum seekers among the countries surveyed: approximately 74,000 asylum seekers in 2011. This compares to approximately 55,500 asylum seekers for 2010, … Read more
Asylum claims in “industrialized” countries were up 17% during the first half of 2011, according to the United Nations: An estimated 198,300 asylum applications were recorded during the first six months of 2011 in the 44 countries included in this report. This is 17 per cent more than during the same period 2010 (169,300), and … Read more
Louis Henkin, a leading scholar in international law and foreign policy, professor emeritus at Columbia Law School, and one of the principal architects of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, died last week at age 92. Prof. Henkin led a long and eventful life. He was born Eliezer Henkin in 1917 in Belarus, … Read more