Abstract
In autumn 2005 a group of Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees discontented with the unbearable conditions in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refuges (UNHCR) office in Cairo started a sit-in protest near the office. The protesters were, besides venting their anger at the suspension of Refugee Status Determination procedures for Sudanese refugees due to the ceasefire between the Sudanese government and Sudan’s People Liberation Army, also making their frustrations heard regarding UNHCR’s lengthy procedures, its failure to provide them with proper assistance, the high numbers of rejected applications, improper interviews and their general treatment by UNHCR’s personnel as well as their difficult social and health conditions which had been aggravated by the lack of proper assistance. They were demanding that this situation be remedied and calling for transparent and fair procedures. Shortly thereafter they were joined by many more protesters so that in the following three months a group of between 1,800 and 2,500 people stayed around UNHCR’s premises. However, meetings and negotiations with UNCHR eventually failed. The crisis ended in a tragedy. On December 30, 2005 the Egyptian security forces proceeded ith the forcible removal of the protesters from the venue in an action in which 28 refugees were killed, more than half of which were children and women, with several protesters missing after the events. The Cairo incident illustrates what the cited report on the events has rightly called “a tragedy of failures and false expectations” regarding international humanitarian and human rights institutions.
The author would like to thank participants in the research project, especially Professor Armin von Bogdandy, Professor Rüdiger Wolfrum, Dr. Jochen von Bernstorff, Dr. Philipp Dann, Matthias Goldmann and Ingo Venzke and the participants of the International Workshop, especially Professor Giacinto della Cananea and Professor Christian Tietje for valuable comments and suggestions on the drafts, colleague Marc Jacob for reading the draft and Eva Richter for formatting.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Smrkolj, M. (2010). International Institutions and Individualized Decision-Making: An Example of UNHCR’s Refugee Status Determination. In: von Bogdandy, A., Wolfrum, R., von Bernstorff, J., Dann, P., Goldmann, M. (eds) The Exercise of Public Authority by International Institutions. Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, vol 210. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04531-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04531-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04530-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04531-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawLaw and Criminology (R0)