Human Rights of Migrants: The Dawn of a New Era?

The purpose of this article is to highlight a number of key legal and policy developments which have occurred since the turn of the twenty-first century and to reflect on how these have and may advance the protection of the human rights of migrants. This article is optimistic and forward-looking in tenor, although the generally positive developments discussed do not necessarily mean that abuses of migrants and violations of their rights are no longer taking place. Nonetheless, if ten years of relatively intense activity can be viewed as a sound measure of progress, there is some cause for optimism that a new era may well be dawning for the human rights of migrants and for human rights generally, through the growing recognition that adequately protecting one of the most vulnerable groups in many societies is today the true measure of our humanity

Where Fail-Safe Default Logics Fail

Reiter's original definition of default logic allows for the application of a default that contradicts a previously applied one. We call failure this condition. The possibility of generating failures has been in the past considered as a semantical problem, and variants have been proposed to solve it. We show that it is instead a computational feature that is needed to encode some domains into default logic

Arbeidsimmigratie naar Nederland

Deze studie gaat over de immigratie van vreemdelingen die komen werken. Wij hanteren de begrippen arbeidsimmigrant en buitenlandse werknemer door elkaar. Deze studie gaat in eerste instantie niet over vreemdelingen die voor een ander doel komen zoals het vragen van asiel of voor gezinshereniging, en hun positie op de arbeidsmarkt. Ook wordt in de door ons geraadpleegde bronnen onderscheid gemaakt tussen tijdelijke arbeidsimmigratie en permanente arbeidsimmigratie. Het begrip tijdelijke arbeidsimmigratie kan betekenen dat een arbeidsimmigrant volgens de regels maar een maximaal aantal maanden of jaren mag blijven, zoals seizoensarbeiders of een universitair gastdocent (juridisch tijdelijk). Uit cijfers van het CBS blijkt dat een groot aantal arbeidsimmigranten binnen zes jaar uit Nederland vertrekt (feitelijk tijdelijk). Van permanente arbeidsimmigratie is sprake als het de arbeidsimmigrant is toegestaan zich permanent te vestigen (juridisch permanent). Of de arbeidsimmigrant dat ook daadwerkelijk doet is daarmee nog niet gezegd. Er zijn ook arbeidsimmigranten die in eerste instantie tijdelijk komen maar toch langer blijven, bij dezelfde of een andere werkgever, al dan niet illegaal, of op grond van bijvoorbeeld gezinsvorming (feitelijk permanent)

Measuring the health impact of human rights violations related to Australian asylum policies and practices: A mixed methods study

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copyright @ 2009 Johnston et al.BACKGROUND: Human rights violations have adverse consequences for health. However, to date, there remains little empirical evidence documenting this association, beyond the obvious physical and psychological effects of torture. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether Australian asylum policies and practices, which arguably violate human rights, are associated with adverse health outcomes. METHODS: We designed a mixed methods study to address the study aim. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 71 Iraqi Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) refugees and 60 Iraqi Permanent Humanitarian Visa (PHV) refugees, residing in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to a recent policy amendment, TPV refugees were only given temporary residency status and had restricted access to a range of government funded benefits and services that permanent refugees are automatically entitled to. The quantitative results were triangulated with semi-structured interviews with TPV refugees and service providers. The main outcome measures were self-reported physical and psychological health. Standardised self-report instruments, validated in an Arabic population, were used to measure health and wellbeing outcomes. RESULTS: Forty-six percent of TPV refugees compared with 25% of PHV refugees reported symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of clinical depression (p = 0.003). After controlling for the effects of age, gender and marital status, TPV status made a statistically significant contribution to psychological distress (B = 0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.71, p </= 0.001) amongst Iraqi refugees. Qualitative data revealed that TPV refugees generally felt socially isolated and lacking in control over their life circumstances, because of their experiences in detention and on a temporary visa. This sense of powerlessness and, for some, an implicit awareness they were being denied basic human rights, culminated in a strong sense of injustice. CONCLUSION: Government asylum policies and practices violating human rights norms are associated with demonstrable psychological health impacts. This link between policy, rights violations and health outcomes offers a framework for addressing the impact of socio-political structures on health.This research was supported by an Australian National and Medical Research Council PhD Scholarship (N. 251782) and a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation research grant (No. 2002-0280)