Hannah Arendt, Refugees and the phenomenology of human rights: On the perplexities, failures and prospects of the international human rights law protection regime

Eda, Luke

Abstract

One common feature of most of the world’s greatest challenges of the last century—persecution, armed conflicts and systematic human rights violations is that they produced large numbers of refugees, thus triggering the global refugee crisis. The phenomenological reality of the global refugee crisis tests the stability, effectiveness, and redemptive power of the international human rights project at three levels: first, it exposes the perplexities, failures and gaps in the current international human rights framework for refugee protection; second, it raises the issue of how the current international human rights framework for refugee protection can adapt, evolve and develop in light of refugee crisis; and third, the issue of what should be the appropriate response of states to the inherent shortcomings of the international human rights framework for refugee protection, e.g., responses through more treaties, judicial strategies or more consensus building and action plans immediately comes to the fore. The paper asks if the escalating global refugee crisis challenges the stability and redemptive power of international human rights law to protect the rights of refugees, such as to require rethinking the current international human rights law protection framework for greater efficiency.

Building on Hannah Arendt’s theory of ‘right to have rights’ (Arendt, 1968) grounded on the phenomenology of human rights, the paper argues that it does for two reasons. First, the international human rights law protection regime built on the ambiguous, sometimes over-rationalised assumption that all human beings are entitled to human rights as such without genuinely vesting man with political rights was ripped apart precisely the moment the nation-state system was confronted by refugees ‘who had lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human’ (Arendt, 1968). Second, current international efforts to adapt the international human rights law regime in the face of the escalating global refugee crisis focus majorly on doctrines of legal positivism, which views law solely as a body of rules for which the independent moral value of obedience is assumed, rather than a phenomenological approach where the ‘lived experiences’ of refugees and other vulnerable groups are put at the centre of all international efforts to find durable solutions to the crisis. This doctrinal view of human rights law undermines human rights’ foundational ‘vision of improving the world and bringing about a new one where the rights and dignity of each individual will enjoy secure international protection’ (Moyn, 2010). Therefore, to enhance the prospects of strengthening the stability, effectiveness and emancipatory power of the international human rights project, the paper suggests that a revised international human rights protection regime that recognises the lived experiences of refugees is needed to address more effectively the protection needs of refugees in the world. The paper outlines what, at an institutional level, such a revised human rights protection regime would look like; what, in political terms, the basis/consensus for such a regime should be; and what normative claims for the legitimacy and acceptability of that regime would be required.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Abstract
• Conference Name: Protections in International Law Annual Law Conference
• Start Date: Mar 19, 2025
• End Date: Mar 19, 2025
• Acceptance Date: Feb 26, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 26, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/13983139