Wesley Gibbings
The Government’s recent, astounding decision to publicly degrade the value of this country’s implicit commitments under international law, should not have come as a surprise to careful observers of our behaviour as a country over the past 30 or so years.
There are hundred of treaties, conventions, protocols, rules, and agreements next to which we can find our name as a country but against which we cannot claim outstanding performance credentials.
There are also numerous inter-governmental bodies whose guidelines carry our proud endorsement. The PR for us on such matters has been rather impressive, but the international relations folks and others can tell you the compliance story.
As a non-legal person, I am also not ritualistically swayed by an absence of statute, especially since I believe that the actual satisfying of international agreements exceeds the value of both the photo-op and accompanying regulations if they ever come. It has to do with actual sovereign predisposition and practice.
What I believe truly counts under such arrangements—as is the case with both interpersonal and institutional relationships—is the statement of intent, the promise, the open declaration of commitment, and the undertaking to adhere to set principles through the way we behave as a nation.
This is what differentiates internationally-respected countries from renegade states, the latter characteristically insisting on the paramountcy of what is often loosely described as “national sovereignty” and more elaborately expressed as variants of modern-day fascism.
As a close watcher of the regional process, I can also add that we are a band of 15 rather unreliable allies trying to operate an integration machine under leadership that continually breaks its word. The CCJ thankfully exists to adjudicate on this.
Today, rhetorical sleight of hand on the process that moves a country from signature to ratification to accession is being engaged as the signal of an intention to break our word when it comes to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol which expanded the global reach of inaugural guidelines and principles.
But let’s focus on one issue that has come to the fore in the midst of the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. It involves the principle of “non-refoulement”—essentially an undertaking that if people come to you in states of prescribed distress, you should not turn them away without first listening to what they have to say, and without evaluating the risks.
It’s almost the same as telling police officers that if someone comes to the station with marks of violence on her body, and a complaint, they should not routinely send the person back to the place where she claims to have sustained the injuries in the first place.
Now, I am aware of the technical discussion on the dubious status of “non-refoulement” as a pre-emptory norm of international law. I am not attempting to address that particular issue here. I am simply drawing attention to the fact that there exists a principle, recognised by the world community, that asylum-seekers—people seeking protection from harm and persecution at home—should not prima facie be rejected by any countries on whose doorsteps they arrive.
If it is anyone’s “agenda” to ensure this principle is observed, it should be all of ours. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Living Water Community have an “agenda” to as much comply with global standards and principles, as they are committed to the observance of the letter of domestic law.
As far as I know, for example, there is no particular regulation to coerce the police officers at the station to act properly; only guidance and principles that express decent behaviour and a duty of care.
The agenda of citizens is to ensure we retain international respect as a nation even in the face of xenophobic disinformation, imprecise statistics, ethnic stereotyping, and unsubstantiated, generalised claims of criminality.
None of this makes for sensible decision-making on something that has the potential to distinguish us from countries that are not, at this time, the most impressive examples of trustworthiness or principled behaviour.