Forced Displacement and Broken Ties

Although most forcibly displaced persons are legal nationals of a state, they lack functioning citizenship with their governments. In fact, their governments are often responsible for the human rights abuses and conflicts that prompted their displacement to begin with. While some protections under international law are meant to fill the gaps created by these broken ties, in reality the displaced suffer widespread human rights abuses in the absence of a reliable state duty-bearer. Anti–Syrian refugee sentiments in Europe, refugee detention in Australia, and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge many “illegal immigrants” as asylum-seekers in North America are just a few examples of the severe challenges to basic human rights the forcibly displaced face in the absence of functioning citizenship. The inadequacies of refugee rights, including the false assumption that displacement is anything less than normal in our current system, lead to glaring denials of the rights to place and purpose for the displaced.