Papers by Rosemary Ann Byrne
Brill | Nijhoff eBooks, 2005
Routledge eBooks, Dec 6, 2019
The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) was established to provide evidence-based policy advice to... more The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) was established to provide evidence-based policy advice to EU institutions and Member States. By blending social science research with traditional normative work, it aims to influence human rights policy processes through new ways of framing empirical realities. The contributors to this volume critically examine the experience of the Agency in its first decade, exploring FRA’s historical, political and legal foundations and its evolving record across major strands of EU fundamental rights. Central themes arising from these chapters include consideration of how the Agency manages the tension between a mandate to advise and the more traditional approach of human rights bodies to ‘monitor’, and how its research impacts the delicate equilibrium between these two contesting roles? FRA's experience as the first ‘embedded’ human rights agency is also highlighted, suggesting a role for alternative and less oppositional orientations for human rights research. While authors observe the benefits of the technocratic approach to human rights research that is a hallmark of FRA’s evidence-based policy advice, they also note its constraints. FRA’s policy work requires a continued awareness of political realities in Brussels, Member States, and civil society. Consequently, the complex process of determining the Agency’s research agenda reflects the strategic priorities of key actors. This is an important factor in the Agency’s role in the EU human rights landscape. This pioneering position of the Agency should invite reflection on new forms of institutionalized human rights research for the future.
T.M.C. Asser Press eBooks, 2007
European Review, Sep 8, 2006
International Journal of Refugee Law, Oct 17, 2007
Although credibility determinations rest at the core of refugee protection, international refugee... more Although credibility determinations rest at the core of refugee protection, international refugee law has failed to develop a body of evidentiary principles that is tailored to the unique dimensions of the testimony of those seeking asylum. This article examines recent developments in assessing oral testimony in international criminal law. International criminal law judges, like national asylum adjudicators, must transcend geographic, linguistic, cultural, educational and psychological barriers in order to assess the credibility of testimony. As a result, these new international courts have developed a body of principles of international evidence law for assessing the testimony of alleged victims of, and witnesses to, human rights abuses. Current social science research on the asylum procedures in several jurisdictions reveals that asylum decision makers often fail to adapt the determination process to account for the realities of refugees presenting their cases in legal fora, directing proceedings with a ' presumptive skepticism ' of claims. It is argued that the nuanced and rigourous model for the assessment of the testimonial evidence of alleged victims and witnesses of human rights abuses in war crimes trials introduces effective international norms for the assessment of credibility in asylum proceedings.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Nov 1, 2003
The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe... more The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe, what its effects are on state practice and refugee protection in the Baltic and Central European candidate countries, and what this process reveals about the framework used by scholars to understand the dynamics of international refugee law. Arguably, an exclusive focus on EU institutions and their dissemination of regional and international norms among candidate countries through the acquis communitaire is misleading. Looking at the subregional interplay between Vienna and Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, Copenhagen and Vilnius provides a richer understanding of the emergence of norms than the standard narrative of a Brussels dictate. Hence, to capture these dynamics, we will attempt to expand the framework of analysis by incorporating sub-regional settings, cutting across the divide between old and new Members, and by analysing the repercussions sent out by domestic legislation within these settings. While acknowledging that bilateral and multilateral relations are continuously interwoven, we conclude that bilateralism accounts for a greater degree of normative development and proliferation than multilateralism at EU level, and that domestic legislation as formed by sub-regional dynamics will remain the ultimate object of study for scholars of international refugee law. In the following, reference to the 1951 Convention covers the Convention as modified by the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, 31 Jan. 1967, 606 UNTS 267. 2 See e.g. Simpson, 'Asylum and Immigration in the European Union After the Treaty of Amsterdam', 5
European Journal of International Law, Apr 1, 2004
The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe... more The present article seeks to explore how asylum law is formed, transformed and reformed in Europe, what its effects are on state practice and refugee protection in the Baltic and Central European candidate countries, and what this process reveals about the framework used by scholars to understand the dynamics of international refugee law. Arguably, an exclusive focus on EU institutions and their dissemination of regional and international norms among candidate countries through the acquis communautaire is misleading. Looking at the sub-regional interplay between Vienna and Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, Copenhagen and Vilnius provides a richer understanding of the emergence of norms than the standard narrative of a Brussels dictate. Hence, to capture these dynamics, we will attempt to expand the framework of analysis by incorporating sub-regional settings, cutting across the divide between old and new Members, and by analysing the repercussions sent out by domestic legislation within these settings. While acknowledging that bilateral and multilateral relations are continuously interwoven, we conclude that bilateralism accounts for a greater degree of normative development and proliferation than multilateralism at EU level, and that domestic legislation as formed by sub-regional dynamics will remain the ultimate object of study for scholars of international refugee law.
Brill | Nijhoff eBooks, 2002
Brill | Nijhoff eBooks, 2002
Brill | Nijhoff eBooks, 2002
Item does not contain fulltextXVIII, 261 p
English abstract: Aiming to advance protection standards, refugee law specialists have produced a... more English abstract: Aiming to advance protection standards, refugee law specialists have produced a vast body of advocacy scholarship. Literature within the field is framed by a protection narrative that speaks of a human rights approach to refugee law premised on legal duties and moral obligations towards refugees and the economic and cultural benefits that flow from fulfilling them. Having previously enjoyed varying degrees of acceptance by European policy makers and the public, the protection narrative has lost traction in the current EU refugee crisis. This article explores why this has happened by looking at the protection narrative and how refugee law speaks to politics. Discourse in the refugee rights is focused on the 1951 Convention and is commonly situated within an adversarial dialectic vis-a-vis governments. It is also marked by silences regarding core anxieties of the public which include how refugee policy impacts marginalized host communities, immigration and deportatio...
The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) was established to provide evidence-based policy advice to... more The EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) was established to provide evidence-based policy advice to EU institutions and Member States. By blending social science research with traditional normative work, it aims to influence human rights policy processes through new ways of framing empirical realities. The contributors to this volume critically examine the experience of the Agency in its first decade, exploring FRA’s historical, political and legal foundations and its evolving record across major strands of EU fundamental rights. Central themes arising from these chapters include consideration of how the Agency manages the tension between a mandate to advise and the more traditional approach of human rights bodies to ‘monitor’, and how its research impacts the delicate equilibrium between these two contesting roles? FRA's experience as the first ‘embedded’ human rights agency is also highlighted, suggesting a role for alternative and less oppositional orientations for human rights...
Harv. Hum. Rts. J., 1996
... In this context, "safe" means that neither the asylum-seeker nor the group to which... more ... In this context, "safe" means that neither the asylum-seeker nor the group to which he or she belongs is in danger of ... tion Ministers in their London Resolutions,32 and is therefore likely to serve as a basis for regional harmonization throughout the European Union. ...
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Papers by Rosemary Ann Byrne