ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the large number of refugees who spend long stretches of their lives in camps and what, if anything, could make these camps morally acceptable. There is wide agreement that states have some kind of obligation to admit refugees. The modern refugee regime began with the realization that certain states and the international order as a whole had failed — in a deep and morally egregious manner — Jewish people fleeing the Holocaust. The chapter looks at the UN Convention definition of a refugee, and saw that it has some key elements, including that a refugee be persecuted, on the basis of one of the enumerated characteristics, and outside of their country of origin. It also looks at how these different theories can explain the nature and strength of states’ obligations to refugees and considered how a category of climate change refugees might be accommodated under these different views.
