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Les crimes de guerre et le crime de guerre
La Presse, April 17, 2022Print
Séisme : des Canadiens d’origine syrienne peinent à envoyer de l’aide à leurs proches
Des Canadiens disent avoir posé des mines antipersonnel en Ukraine
The Regional Law of Refugee Protection in Africa
by Marina Sharpe
Oxford University Press
January 1, 2018
9780198826224
This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts.
Part One analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Convention's drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and complementary relationships between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter.
Part Two focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa
It's All Relative: The Humanitarian Principles in Historical and Legal Perspective
by Marina Sharpe
Published by International Review of the Red Cross (forthcoming)
January 1, 2024
Iran’s Arbitrary Detention of Foreign and Dual Nationals as Hostage-Taking and Crimes Against Humanity
by Carla Ferstman, Marina Sharpe
Published by Journal of International Criminal Justice (Oxford University Press)
March 1, 2022
This article examines, within the frame of international criminal law, Iran’s arbitrary detention of foreign and dual nationals for leverage over the detainee’s (other) country of nationality. It provides an overview of Iran’s pattern of conduct since 2010, involving at least 66 victims, and analyses this in terms of hostage-taking and crimes against humanity. First, we argue that Iran’s pattern of conduct constitutes hostage-taking within the meaning of the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. This gives rise to Iran’s international responsibility for the breaches concerned and has important implications for victims’ and their loved ones’ perceptions of their experiences. Second, we assess the context elements of the definition of crimes against humanity as well as the gravity threshold and the compatibility of the pattern of conduct with the requisite elements of the relevant underlying offences: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, and persecution. We conclude that the actions of certain Iranian officials reasonably satisfy the requirements for crimes against humanity. This is legally important for the application of crimes against humanity jurisprudence to this new context. It also opens avenues of accountability, given the aut dedere aut judicare provisions for crimes against humanity enacted by many states and the growth of sanctions legislation in several states. It should be difficult for responsible officials to travel outside Iran for fear of arrest and sanction.
URL: https://academic.oup.com/jicj/article/20/2/403/6543573?login=false
The Supervision (or Not) of the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention
by Marina Sharpe
Published by International Journal of Refugee Law (Oxford University Press)
December 1, 2019
This article covers the supervision of the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (1969 Convention). It begins by defining treaty supervision and describing key understandings of it in the international refugee law literature. These are then harnessed to create a model of supervision (the Supervisory Model) to frame the ensuing discussion. How the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is supervised is presented within this Supervisory Model, by way of background. The article then moves on to its principal focus, beginning with an overview of the calls for, and claims regarding, supervision of the 1969 Convention. The need for supervision is then established based on two principal elements. First, the 1969 Convention’s incomplete implementation in States parties to the treaty, in both refugee status determination and in relation to rights guaranteed by the instrument. Secondly, existing bodies with quasi-supervisory or supervisory mandates – the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – are not effectively redressing such implementation deficiencies. With the need for supervision established, a new supervisory mechanism is proposed and the procedural options to create it are outlined.
URL: https://academic.oup.com/ijrl/article-abstract/31/2-3/261/5580762
Lester B Pearson’s Road to Development
by Robert Greenhill, Marina Sharpe
Published by Canadian Foreign Policy Journal
March 1, 2019
During the 1950s and 60s, Lester Pearson came to see international assistance as central to Canada’s constructive international engagement. Yet how Canada’s greatest diplomat became a key architect of, and advocate for, international assistance remains relatively unexplored. This paper aims to chart the evolution of Pearson’s thinking regarding international assistance, in a presentation organized chronologically around the major chapters of Pearson’s career. It enhances the narrative of a storied political career, consolidates Pearson’s thinking on a critical issue and provides historical insight relevant to contemporary official development assistance policy-making.
URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/11926422.2018.1522262
Mixed Up: International Law and the Meaning(s) of “Mixed Migration”
by Marina Sharpe
Published by Refugee Survey Quarterly (Oxford University Press)
March 1, 2018
Refugees and other distinct migrant populations often travel together. The policy concept of “mixed migration” arose to describe this migration phenomenon. However, the term has various meanings. These can be divided into two categories: on the one hand are understandings that focus solely on the complex composition of migration flows; on the other are meanings that consider both complexity and individuals’ mixed motivations for moving. Because of this, “mixed migration” has contributed less to thinking around, and humanitarian action in relation to, migration than it might otherwise have. This article describes these diverse understandings and harnesses relevant legal principles − drawn from refugee, human rights, humanitarian, and transnational criminal law, as well as from the law of the sea − in support of one understanding of the term. It argues that international law augurs in favour of an understanding focused solely on complexity, because the legal principles applicable in mixed migration situations apply regardless of individual motivations. Including such motivations within the policy concept only serves to divorce “mixed migration” from its legal underpinnings. Moreover, understanding “mixed migration” in terms of varied individual motivations for moving might fuel populist anti-immigration sentiment. A complexity-based understanding of mixed migration would enhance the concept’s utility.
URL: https://academic.oup.com/rsq/article-abstract/37/1/116/4829708?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Biography
Marina Sharpe is Assistant Professor of international law in the international studies programme at Canada's Royal Military College Saint-Jean, as well as Professeure associée with Université de Sherbrooke’s Faculty of Law. Immediately prior to joining RMCSJ, Sharpe served as Senior Legal Officer with UNHCR’s Representation to the African Union in Addis Ababa. She has also been a Post-Doctoral Fellow at McGill University’s Faculty of Law, Senior Research Fellow at Global Canada, legal officer at human rights NGOs in Kampala and a lawyer with the New York firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Sharpe's work has been recognized with Canada’s most competitive research awards: the Trudeau Doctoral Scholarship, SSHRC’s Banting Post-Doctoral Fellowship and SSHRC's Insight Grant. It has also been cited in UNHCR refugee law guidance. She is called to the bars of New York and England and Wales and regularly advises international organizations, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, UNHCR and UNICEF. She has taught and guest lectured widely, including at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale. Sharpe is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and of The Regional Law of Refugee Protection in Africa (OUP 2018). She sits on the editorial board OUP's International Journal of Refugee Law. She holds a DPhil in law from Oxford, an MSc in international development from the LSE and LLB and BCL (law) and BA (economics) degrees from McGill.
Research Grants
Trudeau Scholarship
Organization: Pierre Elliott Trudeau FoundationDate: May 1, 2011
Grant amount: $210,000
Banting Post-Doctoral Fellowship
Organization: Social Science and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDate: May 1, 2018
Grant amount: $140,000
Canadian Defence Academy Research Programme
Organization: Canadian Defence AcademyDate: March 1, 2022
Grant amount: $14,000
Insight Grant
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDate: April 1, 2022
Grant amount: $88,000