Tenth International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ) World Conference in Tunisia
This piece was submitted by Oliver Tringham and has been lightly edited. Oliver has been working in the Choucha Refugee Camp since the Spring of 2011. He worked on Network Dhikra, a project training local people in the town of Remada in Southern Tunisia to run art and craft workshops at the town’s refugee camp. At present he is involved with Peace in the Desert – a project in Tataouine to welcome those refugees from Choucha who have been rejected by UNHCR, and to allow them to live normally in Tunisian society.
The Tenth World Conference of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ) was held in Tunisia in October 2014. The first day of the conference took place in the Presidential Palace in Carthage.
Mike Ross, former Chair of the Americas’ Chapter of the IARLJ noted: ‘The IARLJ was founded with a desire on the part of many refugee judges around the world to bring some consistency to the adjudication of refugee claims’ (TAIEX Training Programme, p. 2), and to this end, the IARLJ organised two days of training before the conference proper – as it has done at previous conferences. One was an Advanced Training for the IARLJ judges. The other was a Basic and Intermediate Training, run by TAIEX.
‘The aim of the workshop is to provide Tunisian judges and other relevant public officials with training on the principles of international and EU refugee law, in particular the Geneva Convention and the EU Directives on qualifications and procedures…. The workshop aims at contributing to awareness raising, sharing of knowledge and development of capacities in support of the Geneva Convention in Tunisia’ (Ibid.).
As the TAIEX programme states: ‘It is noted that there is a judicial gap in Tunisian legislation when it comes to determination of refugee status’. Tunisia, having ratified the OAU 1969 and UN 1951 Conventions on refugees, has never enacted domestic legislation or instituted procedures for recognising refugees. After the 2011 Revolution, it set up a Commission to draft a new asylum law, but little if any progress has been made. In the absence of Tunisian domestic refugee law, UNHCR has been determining refugee status.
The TAIEX training was led by the Belgian Judge, Katelijne Declerck together with Anna Bengtsson, from the Swedish Migration Board, and others. The Tunisian judges’ need for such training and their almost complete lack of experience in the area of asylum, was noticeable.
Highlights of the conference itself included a comprehensive introduction to the current world refugee situation by Volcker Türk, Head of International Protection at UNHCR Geneva as well as a powerful speech by Ahmed Arbee, Head of the IARLJ ‘Africa Chapter’ and former Chairperson of the South African Refugee Appeal Board, on the African perspective. Bernard McCloskey, President of the British Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, gave a talk on the Tunisian Constitution, and in particular, on the shortcomings of Article 26, which is the only article in the Constitution referring to asylum. He pointed out that Article 26 refers only to ‘political’ asylum.
During both the training and the conference I had the opportunity to report on the precarious situation of the failed refugees at Choucha who are still waiting, as they have done since the Spring of 2011, for a solution to their problems.