By Cody Corliss

The Article examines the relationship between trafficking and enslavement in light of recent calls from activists to prosecute trafficking as an international crime. Although human trafficking has repeatedly been denounced as "modern slavery," there remains significant distinctions between the crimes of enslavement and trafficking. Enslavement is an international crime that may be prosecuted in international courts and tribunals in addition to national courts. Trafficking, on the other hand, is a transnational crime restricted to domestic courts.

Under certain circumstances, however, trafficking crimes may constitute the crime of enslavement, as the definition of enslavement in the Statute of the International Criminal Court recognizes. Given their overlap, this Article examines the relationship between trafficking and enslavement, utilizing their respective histories of prohibition and criminalization and judgments at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and European Court for Human Rights.

South Carolina Law Review, Vol. 71, No. 3, 2020, WVU College of Law Research Paper No. 2024-008.

Editors:  Rebecca Adami, Anna Kaldal , and  Margareta As

How can human rights for children born outside their national jurisdiction with parents deemed as terrorists be safeguarded? In what ways do children risk being discriminated in their welfare rights in Sweden when treated as invisible part of a family? How can we do research on children’s rights in not just ethically sensitive ways but also with respect for children as rights subjects? And what could be a theory on social justice for children? These are questions discussed in studies from different disciplines concerning children’s international human rights, with a special focus on the realization of the CRC in Sweden.

Leiden: Brill, 2023. 

Edited by Jessica Johnson and Karekwaivanane, George Hamandishe

Pursuing Justice in Africa focuses on the many actors pursuing many visions of justice across the African continent—their aspirations, divergent practices, and articulations of international and vernacular idioms of justice. The essays selected by editors Jessica Johnson and George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane engage with topics at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. These include activism, land tenure, international legal institutions, and postconflict reconciliation. Building on recent work in socio-legal studies that foregrounds justice over and above concepts such as human rights and legal pluralism, the contributors grapple with alternative approaches to the concept of justice and its relationships with law, morality, and rights. While the chapters are grounded in local experiences, they also attend to the ways in which national and international actors and processes influence, for better or worse, local experiences and understandings of justice. The result is a timely and original addition to scholarship on a topic of major scholarly and pragmatic interest. Contributors: Felicitas Becker, Jonathon L. Earle, Patrick Hoenig, Stacey Hynd, Fred Nyongesa Ikanda, Ngeyi Ruth Kanyongolo, Anna Macdonald, Bernadette Malunga, Alan Msosa, Benson A. Mulemi, Holly Porter, Duncan Scott, Olaf Zenker.

Athens, OH:: Ohio University Press, 2018.

By Olivier Marie and Paolo Pinotti

The association between immigration and crime has long been a subject of debate, and only recently have we encountered systematic empirical evidence on this issue. Data shows that immigrants, often younger, male, and less educated compared to natives, are disproportionately represented among offenders in numerous host countries. However, existing research, inclusive of our analysis of new international data, consistently indicates that immigration does not significantly impact local crime rates in these countries. Furthermore, recent studies underscore that obtaining legal status diminishes immigrants' involvement in criminal activities. Finally, we discuss potential explanations for the apparent incongruity between immigrants' overrepresentation among offenders and the null effect of immigration on crime rates.

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES. VOL. 38, NO. 1, WINTER 2024. (pp. 181-200)

By Matthias Lücke , Helena Hahn , Silvia Carta , Martin Ruhs , Mehari Taddele Maru , Paweł Kaczmarczyk , Karolina Łukasiewicz , Marta Pachocka , Tobias Heidland

Recent geopolitical events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the instrumentalisation of migration from Belarus to Poland are re-shaping the EU's migration policy. To build a resilient migration and asylum system, the EU and its member states must find a way to balance ad hoc, crisis-oriented responses with a long-term, strategic approach. This is one of the main findings of the 2022 MEDAM Assessment Report “Refugee protection in the EU: Building resilience to geopolitical conflict”.

This final report concludes the Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM). Launched in 2016, the project aimed to develop concrete proposals to reform EU asylum and migration policy based on in-depth research. The report considers the most recent developments in the European migration system and reflects on how the numerous crises facing the EU influence the negotiations on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, proposed in 2020, and public perception of migrants and refugees.

As Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine, the report provides an insightful analysis of refugee movements from Ukraine to Europe since February 2022. The authors discuss the effectiveness of the TPD and future challenges that the war's outcome can pose.

The report also considers general, global migration trends. First, it looks more closely at the link between migration and development policies. The report advances the argument that the relation between economic development, foreign aid, and out-migration is a complex one, challenging the widespread belief that better economic conditions encourage migration. The report also explores the preconditions for effective cooperation on migration management with countries of origin and transit, with a particular focus on EU-Africa relations.

Recent geopolitical events have put migration and asylum back at the centre of EU policymaking. Yet, member states are still struggling to find a common, structured and effective response. Finding a way to bridge their deep-seated differences will be vital to ensure that the EU is ready to navigate future crises.

MEDAM Assessment Report . Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM). 2022. 92p.

By Anastasia Karatzas

The harmful consequences of child immigration detention are, by now, increasingly well-documented. Evidence attests to the long-lasting and negative impact of the practice on children’s health, well-being and development, and has given rise to an international consensus firmly against its continued use.

However, the European Union’s policies fail to reflect any such agreement, which is evident not least in the context of the Return Directive and member states’ continued use of the practice. As it stands, the detention of minors is permitted by the Directive and remains a plausible option both according to the European Commission’s proposal to recast it and the Council of the EU’s position on the matter.

Furthermore, although the Directive mandates member states to explore all plausible alternatives and use child immigration detention only as a measure of last resort, evidence suggests that detention is prolific and other measures underused. In the recast proposal, little looks set to change on this front either, with the use of alternatives having fallen mostly by the wayside.

In this context, this paper argues that, with negotiations on the file ongoing, the time for the EU to shift gears, ban the practice, and mandate member states to implement alternatives is now opportune.

Brussels: European Policy Centre, 2022.  12p.

By Jonathan Hafetz

The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantánamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantánamo is simply—and alarmingly—the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.

Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider’s view of the detention of “enemy combatants” and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running.

In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 331p.

BY ROGER J. R. LEVESQUE  

In the wake of the civil rights movement, the legal system dramatically changed its response to discrimination based on race, gender, and other characteristics. It is now showing signs of yet another dramatic shift, as it moves from considering difference to focusing on neutrality. Rather than seeking to counter subjugation through special protections for groups that have been historically (and currently) disadvantaged, the Court now adopts a “colorblind” approach. Equality now means treating everyone the same way.

This book explores these shifts and the research used to support civil rights claims, particularly relating to minority youths’ rights to equal treatment. It integrates developmental theory with work on legal equality and discrimination, showing both how the legal system can benefit from new research on development and how the legal system itself can work to address invidious discrimination given its significant influence on adolescents—especially those who are racial minorities—at a key stage in their developmental life.

Adolescents, Discrimination, and the Law articulates the need to address discrimination by recognizing and enlisting the law’s inculcative powers in multiple sites subject to legal regulation, ranging from families, schools, health and justice systems to religious and community groups. The legal system may champion ideals of neutrality in the goals it sets itself for treating individuals, but it cannot remain neutral in the values it supports and imparts. This volume shows that despite the shift to a focus on neutrality, the Court can and should effectively foster values supporting equality, especially among youth.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2015. 304p.

By Emily Ryo and Reed Humphrey

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to government­appointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have described this situation as an access-to-justice crisis or a representation crisis for immigrant communities. The prevailing wisdom suggests that the solution to this crisis is more lawyers or more nonlawyer practitioners, such as accredited representatives and legal technicians, who can provide affordable and quality legal services. The focus, therefore, has been on the ubiquity of "legal deserts," commonly defined as areas that are in shortage of lawyers, and on ways to increase the supply of legal service providers in the marketplace.

This Article presents an empirical study of legal representation that unsettles this prevailing wisdom by showing why an adequate supply of legal service providers is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to address the representation crisis. Our study uses a new and original dataset that we compiled for the purposes of this study on immigration lawyers and non-detained immigrant respondents in removal proceedings. Our findings suggest that although the focus on the supply­side dimension of the representation crisis is important, it obscures other complex sets of barriers to obtaining legal representation that are distinct from the problem of legal deserts. Specifically, our empirical analyses show that whether a non-detained immigrant respondent obtains legal representation is predicted by where they reside, their primary language, and the size of their conational social networks, controlling for the availability of practicing immigration lawyers in close proximity to their places of residence and other potential confounders. In short, we argue that geography, language, and networks are destiny for immigrant respondents when it comes to obtaining legal representation. Thus, addressing the representation crisis requires looking beyond the problem of legal deserts to attend to a variety of other hurdles to obtaining legal representation that are associated with certain geographical, linguistic, and social isolation in which many immigrants live.

101 North Carolina Law Review 787-840 (2023), 54 pages

By Donald Kerwin and Evin Millet

This study examines the legal capacity available to low-income immigrants on national, state, and sub-state levels. Legal professionals working in charitable immigration service programs serve as the study’s rough proxy for legal capacity, and undocumented immigrants its proxy for legal need. The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) compiled data on charitable immigration programs and their legal professionals from the:

• US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) “Recognized Organizations and Accredited Representatives Roster by State and City,” which is maintained by the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR’s) Office of Legal Access Programs (OLAP).

• Directories of two leading, legal support agencies for charitable immigration legal programs, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and the Immigrant Advocates Network (IAN).

CMS supplemented and updated these sources with information from the websites of charitable immigration programs. It also added legal programs to its dataset that did not appear in any of these lists. It counted as legal professionals, attorneys, federally accredited non-attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants. The paper finds that there are 1,413 undocumented persons in the United States for every charitable legal professional and far less capacity than the national average in:

• States such as Alabama (6,656 undocumented per legal professional), Hawaii (4,506), Kansas (3,010), Georgia (2,853), New Jersey (2,687), Florida (2,681), North Carolina (2,671), Virginia (2,634) and Arizona (2,561).

• Metropolitan areas (MAs) such as Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (5,307), Dallas-Fort Worth Arlington (4,436), Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale (3,439) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land (3,099).

• San Bernardino County (6,178), Clark County (4,747), Riverside County (4,625), Tarrant County (3,955) and Dallas County (3,939).

The study’s introduction summarizes its top-line findings. Its first section describes the importance of charitable immigration legal programs to immigrants, families and communities. Its second details the study’s findings on charitable legal capacity and immigrant need. Its third compares the legal capacity of 1,803 charitable legal programs and their 7,322 legal professionals, with the US undocumented population by state and for the 15 largest MAs and counties. Its fourth describes CMS’s research methodology and data sources. The paper ends with policy recommendations on how to expand legal capacity for low-income immigrants and better assess legal capacity and need moving forward.

Journal on Migration and Human Security 2022, Vol. 10(3) 190-214

By  Alyna C. Smith and Michele LeVoy

  Impact of insecure residence status on safety and access to justice The criminalisation of irregular migration makes people who are undocumented fearful of engaging with public authorities, and especially with the police, because of the risk that they will be detained and ordered to leave the territory as a result. This distrust is worsened by policing and surveillance of migrant and minority communities. The detention and deportation of people who have experienced abuse and mistreatment is a form of secondary victimisation. The systematic failure of the state to recognise, investigate and remedy abuses committed against undocumented victims denies them recognition and accountability.   

Belgium, PICUM, 2021, 44pg

By PICUM -  Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants

This paper outlines and addresses the particular circumstances and impacts of criminalisation frameworks on the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. Understanding the intersection of the criminalisation of migration and criminalisation of sex work enables an approach which safeguards the human rights and dignity of undocumented migrant sex workers. A number of undocumented migrants work in sex work. They face multiple layers of discrimination, social exclusion, stigma and poverty, due to their migration status and their occupation (as well as any other intersectional forms of discrimination including gender, ethnic or social origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, disability, etc.). PICUM’s concern is not about the judgment of sex work itself, but whether undocumented migrant sex workers have protections and their rights upheld. As more people fall into irregularity across Europe, more undocumented migrants will likely engage in sex work for survival and to generate an income. It is therefore important that PICUM outlines how criminalisation frameworks exacerbate the myriad issues faced by undocumented migrants and works to reduce the harmful impacts of these frameworks. PICUM has worked for eighteen years to address the impacts of criminalisation frameworks on undocumented migrants. Over the past four years, PICUM has had discussions with organisations working with undocumented migrants selling sexual services, both within and outside of PICUM’s membership, including sex worker-led organisations. Several workshops on the challenges facing undocumented migrant sex workers were held at PICUM’s Annual General Assemblies, in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. During the same time period, dedicated sessions on this issue were held within PICUM’s Executive Committee, and having considered the available evidence, this paper is a result of this process. The paper concludes that criminalising the purchase and facilitation of sex work impacts negatively on sex workers, and that the impacts are multiplied when sex workers are undocumented migrants.

Being an undocumented sex worker adds a layer of discrimination, social exclusion and precarity vis-à-vis public services and authorities. Many undocumented sex workers experience theft, violence, harassment, exploitation, evictions and homelessness. They are unable to report crimes to the police without risking deportation, and police are sometimes the perpetrators of violence. They have limited access to essential services including health care, and face immense barriers to accessing protection and justice. Undocumented sex workers are disproportionately subject to police harassment and targeted for immigration enforcement, including as a result of anti-trafficking initiatives. A holistic response is needed to address the human rights violations and lack of opportunities faced by undocumented migrant sex workers. Reforms of policies addressing poverty and discrimination, social services and security, labour rights, immigration and housing, among others, are all needed to provide people with the resources and security they need, both while they are sex workers, and so they don’t have to engage in sex work. Within this, decriminalisation is one of the crucial steps to support the empowerment, human rights and dignity of sex workers. Nonetheless, PICUM will continue to engage in dialogue and work with those of our members and partner organisations with different approaches, focusing on areas of shared concern and action.    

Brussels, Belgium: PICUM. 2019, 32pg

By Sara De Vido

Violence against women is characterised by its universality, the multiplicity of its forms, and the intersectionality of diverse kinds of discrimination against women. Great emphasis in legal analysis has been placed on sex-based discrimination; however, in investigations of violence, one aspect has been overlooked: violence may severely affect women's health and access to reproductive health, and State health policies might be a cause of violence against women. Exploring the relationship between violence against women and women's rights to health and reproductive health, Sara De Vido theorises the new concept of violence against women's health in international law using the Hippocratic paradigm, enriching human rights-based approaches to women's autonomy and reflecting on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination. At the core of the book are two dimensions of violence: horizontal 'interpersonal', and vertical 'state policies'. Investigating these dimensions through decisions made by domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, De Vido reconceptualises States' obligations and eventually asks whether international law itself is the ultimate cause of violence against women's health.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,  2020. 273p.

By American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

This report documents the U.S. government’s inhumane practice of confiscating migrants’ most essential and prized personal belongings as they cross our southern border, including vital medications and medical devices, legal and identity documents, religious items, and items of practical or sentimental importance. Drawing on case examples and perspectives of border organizations that interface directly with migrants and work on this issue firsthand, we present an in-depth depiction of the severe harms caused by the U.S. Border Patrol’s confiscation of migrants’ personal belongings. We also offer concrete policy solutions to help ensure that Border Patrol treats migrants and their belongings with care and respect.

United States, ACLU. 2024, 46pg

By James F. Hollifield

How do liberal democracies balance the need for security with their commitment to protecting the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants? How can states coordinate migration governance while navigating asymmetries in interests and power? Decisions that address national security can seemingly come at the cost of protecting the rights of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. At the same time, liberal democracies must also consider the different calculi of unilateral action and multilateral cooperation.

This policy brief defines the liberal paradox in immigration and refugee policy and explains how the United States and other liberal democracies confront the dilemmas of forced displacement with respect to the competing interests of security, culture, economy, and rights. It provides recommendations on ways to improve international and regional cooperation and to address the challenges in the management of forced migration and human displacement.

Washington, DC:  Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , 2024. 9p.

By Brianna da Silva Bhatia, et al.

On December 23, 2020, Bella Quinto-Collins called 911, seeking help for her 30- year-old brother, Angelo Quinto, who was agitated and exhibiting signs of a mental health crisis at their home in Antioch, California. When two police officers arrived, they pulled Quinto from his mother’s arms onto the floor. At least twice, Quinto’s mother, Cassandra Quinto-Collins, heard him say to the officers, “Please don’t kill me.” Bella and Cassandra then watched in disbelief and horror as the two officers knelt on Quinto’s back for five minutes until he stopped breathing. Three days later, Quinto died in the hospital. It was not until August 2021 that the family learned the official determination of cause of death: a forensic pathologist testified during a coroner’s inquest that Quinto died from “excited delirium syndrome.” Angelo Quinto, a Filipino-American Navy veteran, is one of many people, disproportionately people of color, whose deaths at the hands of police have been attributed to “excited delirium” rather than to the conduct of law enforcement officers. In recent years, others have included Manuel Ellis, Zachary Bear Heels, Elijah McClain, Natasha McKenna, and Daniel Prude. “Excited delirium” even emerged as a defense for the officers who killed George Floyd in 2020. An Austin-American Statesman investigation into each non-shooting death of a person in police custody in Texas from 2005 to 2017 found that more than one in six of these deaths (of 289 total) were attributed to “excited delirium.” A January 2020 Florida Today report found that of 85 deaths attributed to “excited delirium” by Florida medical examiners since 2010, at least 62 percent involved the use of force by law enforcement.6 A Berkeley professor of law and bioethics  conducted a search of these two news databases and three others from 2010 to 2020 and found that of 166 reported deaths in police custody from possible “excited delirium,” Black people made up 43.3 percent and Black and Latinx people together made up at least 56 percent.7 When did the term “excited delirium” evolve to describe a distinct type of “delirium?" How did the corresponding term “excited delirium syndrome” become a go-to diagnosis for medical examiners and coroners to use in explaining deaths in police custody? What is the evidence that it is indeed a valid diagnosis? This report traces the evolution of the term from when it appears to have first been coined in the 1980s to the present. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reconstructed the history of the term “excited delirium” through a review of the medical literature, news archives, and deposition transcripts of expert witnesses in wrongful death cases. We evaluated current views and applications of the term through interviews with 20 medical and legal experts on deaths in law enforcement custody. Additionally, we spoke to six experts on severe mental illness and substance use disorders to better understand the context in which the term most often arises. Finally, we interviewed members of two families who lost loved ones to police violence for a firsthand account of the harms of the term’s continued use. This report concludes that the term “excited delirium” cannot be disentangled from its racist and unscientific origins. Dr. Charles Wetli, who first coined the term with Dr. David Fishbain in case reports on cocaine intoxication in 1981 and 1985, soon after extended his theory to explain how more than 12 Black women in Miami, who were presumed sex workers, died after consuming small amounts of cocaine. “For some reason the male of the species becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in relation to sex,” he postulated. As to why all the women dying were Black, he further speculated, without any scientific basis, “We might find out that cocaine in combination with a certain (blood) type (more common in blacks) is lethal.”  
New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 2022. 95p.

by Kathryn Hampton et al

For the last two years, the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or “Remain in Mexico” policy, have forced almost 70,000 people seeking asylum in the United States to wait in dangerous Mexican border towns while their cases pend – in violation of U.S. and international law, which prohibits returning asylum seekers to places where they fear that they may be persecuted. With the indefinite postponement of immigration hearings due to COVID-19, asylum seekers in MPP face ever-lengthening periods of stay in Mexico, where many have experienced violence, trauma, and human rights abuses.

Since the start of MPP, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has responded to more than 100 requests by attorneys for pro bono forensic evaluations of asylum seekers enrolled in the program, most in support of asylum claims and a few in support of requests for MPP exemption due to health issues. To quantify the extent of reported health and human rights violations affecting asylum seekers in MPP, PHR partnered with the University of Southern California’s Keck Human Rights Clinic (KHRC) to review 95 deidentified affidavits based on forensic evaluations of asylum seekers from Central and South America ranging in age from 4 to 67 years. We found that at least 11 people belonged to categories that should have been exempt from MPP enrollment.  Although most affidavits focused on the harms migrants fled in their home countries, most documented compounding harms to the migrants after they were returned to Mexico under MPP, including physical violence, sexual violence, kidnapping, theft, extortion, threats, and harm to family members. The affidavits also reported unsanitary and unsafe living conditions, poor access to services, family separations, and poor treatment in U.S. immigration detention. Nearly all of those evaluated were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and many exhibited other debilitating psychological conditions or symptoms.

This study adds to the considerable evidence that it is not safe for migrants to remain in Mexico while their U.S. asylum cases are pending, and forcing them to do so violates U.S. and international law. The incoming Biden administration should immediately admit all people enrolled in MPP into community settings in the United States, rescind MPP, and initiate an investigation to determine appropriate redress for people harmed by this policy.

New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 

2021. 21p.

STUESSY, MEGHAN M.

The passage that follows includes several links embedded in the original text. From the document: "On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14110 on 'Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.' This E.O. advances a coordinated approach to the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and directs agencies to mitigate privacy risks and bias potentially exacerbated by AI, including 'by AI's facilitation of the collection or use of information about individuals, or the making of inferences about individuals.' [...] The E.O. focuses on three priorities relating to privacy: 1. Identifying and evaluating agency use of commercially available information (CAI); 2. Revising existing privacy requirements for the adoption of AI, including privacy impact assessments (PIAs); and 3. Encouraging agency use of PETs [privacy-enhancing technologies]."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE. 2024.

By Iryna Bogdanova

Are unilateral economic sanctions legal under public international law? How do they relate to the existing international legal principles and norms? Can unilateral economic sanctions imposed to redress grave human rights violations be subjected to the same legal contestations as other unilateral sanctions? What potential contribution can the recently formulated doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind make by introducing substantive and procedural prerequisites to legitimize unilateral human rights sanctions? Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights by Iryna Bogdanova addresses these complex questions while taking account of the burgeoning state practice of employing unilateral economic sanctions.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. 378p.

By Margaret Monyani, Adamnesh Bogale and Ottilia Anna Maunganidze

Robust legal frameworks and migration management measures in Ethiopia and Kenya give these countries a strong basis for effective migration governance consistent with the rule of law. However, some policy improvements are needed, along with more consistent implementation and better protection of migrants’ rights. Filling these gaps is vital if Ethiopia and Kenya are to advance their role in continental migration governance.

Key findings : The Horn of Africa is a key source, transit and destination region for migrants. National, regional, continental and international multilateral processes to improve migration governance are in place in the region. Countries like Ethiopia and Kenya have developed frameworks to address evolving dynamics, aimed at enhancing legal migration pathways, responding to forced displacement, stimulating regional integration, and tackling the smuggling and trafficking of persons. In Ethiopia and Kenya, policies and practices are informed by regional and global mixed migration trends. While migration governance frameworks in Ethiopia and Kenya are fairly robust and factor in the rule of law, there are weaknesses that need to be addressed. These include gaps in practical migration governance and the inconsistent application of the rule of law. Migration governance should be factored across various government departments in a consistent and coherent manner. For good migration governance to enhance development and growth, gaps in policies and practices must be dealt with. 

Recommendations : The governments of Ethiopia and Kenya should: Review existing migration policies to identify inconsistencies with rule of law principles. Harmonise migration policies in line with international and continental standards and ensure the protection of migrants’ rights. Regularly evaluate the impact of policies and programmes to identify areas for improvement. Encourage community participation in migration-related initiatives to foster shared responsibility and ownership, including through awareness-raising campaigns. Invest in strengthening the capacity of law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders involved in managing migration, focusing on skills and knowledge of migration laws. Engage the private sector in migration governance, particularly regarding labour migration and migrant integration. While migration governance frameworks in Ethiopia and Kenya are fairly robust and factor in the rule of law, there are weaknesses that need to be addressed. These include gaps in practical migration governance and the inconsistent application of the rule of law. Migration governance should be factored across various government departments in a consistent and coherent manner.

EAST AFRICA REPORT 51 |  Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2024. 23p.