CCPL Conference: COVID-19, Borders, and the Law (24 & 25 May 2022)

TODAY & TOMORROW

 

CCPL: COVID-19, Borders, and the Law

 

24 MAY 2022 (TUE) & 25 MAY 2022 (WED)

All are welcome!

Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=81293

PANEL 1: Border Restrictions, Quarantine, and Human Rights Derogations (1:15pm-3pm HKT, May 24)

·         “A Human Rights-Based Approach to Stop a Pathogen at Borders”

o   Martin Scheinin (European University Institute)

·         “Travel Restrictions and International Freedom of Movement”

o   Fernando Dias Simões (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

·         “Lived Experience of Australia’s International and Domestic Covid-19 Border Closures”

o   Kate Ogg (Australian National University) and Olivera Simic (Griffith University)

Chair: Po Jen Yap (HKU Law)

 

PANEL 2: Pandemic Treaties and Travel Restrictions: The Present and Future (3:30pm-5pm HKT, May 24)

·         “An Assessment of the Effectiveness of the International Health Regulations in the Response to Covid-19”

o   Susan Breau (University of Victoria, Canada)

·         “Evolving Understandings of the Effectiveness of International Border Control Measures During the Covid-19 Pandemic”

o   Karen Grépin (HKU School of Public Health)

·         “Digital Capacity and the Proposed International Pandemic Preparedness Treaty”

o   Calvin Ho (HKU Law)

Chair: Eric Ip (HKU Law)

 

PANEL 3: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Pandemics and Border Control (4pm-5:30pm HKT, May 25)

·         “After Covid-19: States, Borders and the New Politics of Exclusion”

o   Matthew Longo (Leiden University)

·         “Border Governance, Shadow Exchanges, and Biosecurity During Covid-19”

o   Tak-Wing Ngo (University of Macau)

·         “Inbound Quarantine Regulations in Colonial Hong Kong”

o   Christopher Szabla (HKU Law)

Chair: Michael Ng (HKU Law)

 

PANEL 4: The Impact of Covid-19 on Migrants and Refugees (7:30pm-9pm HKT, May 25)

·         “Migration in the Mediterranean at the Time of the Pandemic”

o   Sofia Galani (Panteion University, Greece)

·         “How Covid-19 Reinforced Existing Challenges to the Protection of Forced Migrants: Examples from South America”

o   Liliana Jubilut (Universidade Católica de Santos, Brazil)

·         “Citizenship, the Exclusive State, and the Transboundary Pandemic: Covid-19 and Migrants in Southeast Asia”

o   Sriprapha Petcharamesree (Mahibol University, Thailand)

Chair: Kelley Loper (HKU Law)

 

This conference is organized by the Centre for Comparative and Public Law, HKU and will be held via Zoom Meeting. Prior registration is required. For inquiries, please email Phoenix To at pxto@hku.hk.

Chris Szabla on Reimagining Global Migration Governance: From Insufficient Ideas to South-South Solutions (Berkeley J Int'l L)

"Reimagining Global Migration Governance: From Insufficient Ideas to South-South Solutions"
Chris Szabla (Global Academic Fellow)
Berkeley Journal of International Law ,
Volume 39, Issue 1, pp. 19-80
Published in 2021

Abstract: The disarray produced by the “global migration crisis” has resulted in a number of ongoing and proposed reforms of global migration governance, defined as the international law and institutions concerned with all migration. Yet these reforms or proposals appear insufficient or ineffectual—especially to the extent that they often ignore political realities. Fulfilling the promise of global migration governance requires an architecture that instead materially addresses political difficulties. This Article reviews problems with the current and proposed models of global migration governance and proposes to ground reform in consideration of those realities, using a successful model that promoted and protected European emigration in the Twentieth Century. Today, a similar system could help achieve ambitions within the Global South to promote South-South migration among disadvantaged States. Such a model could shift the material incentives (and hence, politics) holding back openness toward migrants, help fulfill migrants’ rights or needs, and promote the fair distribution of migrants toward existing migrant destinations. It could also redress the historical injustices of earlier migration governance systems that advantaged Europeans.

Chris Szabla's Critical Study of the International Labour Organization (ILO)'s Work on Migrants' Rights (Melbourne JIL)

"Entrenching Hierarchies in the Global Periphery: Migration, Development and the 'Native' in ILO Legal Reform Efforts"
Chris Szabla

Melbourne Journal of International Law

Vol 21(2) (Dec 2020), pp 1-39

Abstract: This article examines the historical imbrication of international law and institutions with both migration and development. Specifically, it examines legal initiatives of the interwar International Labour Organization ('ILO') that focused on migration in what is now known as the Global South -- and their aftermath. The Treaty of Versailles created the ILO as an institution related to the League of Nations in part to 'protect ... workers ... in countries other than their own' and invested it with other, more implicit powers related to migration. In subsequent years, the ILO's mandate to oversee migration and promote new migrant rights expanded. Yet such expanding oversight intersected with another feature of the interwar ILO: respecting -- and thereby entrenching in international law and governance -- existing hierarchies forged by colonial relationships or mentalities in regions beyond Europe. The Organization's efforts did shift some state behaviour towards respecting migrants' rights. Nonetheless, in providing largely African 'native' migrants fewer or different protections than those available for European migrants and in encouraging domestic legal reform to accommodate the needs of European settlers migrating to Latin America over those of locals -- each done in order to promote different forms of 'development' -- the institution enshrined and in some ways redoubled hierarchical divisions between Europeans and natives. Its actions, moreover, demonstrate the deep roots of -- and lessons for -- today's impoverished international migration law, forms of international development premised on international institutional control and the legal understanding of 'indigenous peoples'. This analysis therefore not only produces further evidence of the colonial entanglements of international law and institutions but also demonstrates unexplored links between the genealogies of migration, development and international law, as well as implications for rethinking their contemporary forms and their relationship with the Global South today.  Click here to read the full article.