GLJ Special: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations
Channel: German Law Journal
Date: 2020-10-07

The Special Issue brings together fifteen high-profile experts to examine avenues for accountability for human rights violations in the migration control context. The articles explore the promise and limits of strategic human rights limitations; the role of both international criminal law, and domestic (and regional) tort law in securing accountability; the turn to positive obligations to challenge entrenched features of containment; and the role of direct action in support of and solidarity with those challenging migration controls most directly, refugees and migrants themselves.


In their conversation with GLJ editor Nora Markard, Cathryn Costello and Itamar Mann discuss their motivation for putting together this Special Issue, the difficulties and insights gained during the process, the key findings, and the challenges lying ahead.



00:00 Introduction GLJ Specials
00:40 What was your motivation to edit a Special Issue on Migration?
02:59 What were challenges and problems you faced in the process of research and writing?
06:52 What are the most important findings and the limits of your outcome? 
11:09 What next? What are the current challenges? Where is further research required?

Table of Contents of the Special Issue "Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations": https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/german-law-journal/issue/border-justice-migration-and-accountability-for-human-rights-violations/053BC7BB84671FEFEFA74A7B6B3C7A7A

GLJ Editorial for the Special Issue: http://germanlawjournal.com/editorial-volume-21-no-3/

Introduction to the Special Issue: Cathryn Costello & Itamar Mann: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations, German Law Journal 21:3 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2020.27

Abstract:
This introductory Article sets out the premise of the Special Issue, the entrenched and pervasive nature of human rights violations in the context of migration control and the apparent lack of accountability for such violations. It sets out features of contemporary migration control practices and their legal governance that contribute to this phenomenon, namely the exceptional treatment of migration in international law; the limited scope of international refugee law; and the pervasive use of externalized, delegated migration controls, in particular by the EU and its Member States. The roots of the current condition are traced back to the containment practices that emerged at the end of the Cold War, with the 2015 “crisis” framed both as an illustration of the failures of containment, and a source of further stasis. Following an overview of the contributions that make up the Special Issue, this Article identifies five emergent themes, and suggests further lines of inquiry. These are: the promise and limits of strategic human rights limitations; the role of both international criminal law, and domestic (and regional) tort law in securing accountability; the turn to positive obligations to challenge entrenched features of containment; and the role of direct action in support of and solidarity with those challenging migration controls most directly, refugees and migrants themselves. Rather than offering panaceas, the Article concludes with the identification of further new challenges, notably the role of new technologies in further dissipating lines of accountability for decisions to exclude.

Submitting articles or Special Issue proposals to the German Law Journal: https://germanlawjournal.com/submissions/