International Regulations and Legal Gaps Concerning Migrants and Refugees at Sea in Light of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea

Development summary

Ayşegül Dursun and Meltem Ineli Ciğer’s article addresses the protection available to migrants and refugees who travel irregularly by sea under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), together with the duties of states in that setting. It identifies normative gaps arising from the undefined concepts of “distress” and “safe place” in the duty to render assistance under article 98, the absence of enforcement and compensation mechanisms, and the lack of UNCLOS provisions directly protecting migrants and refugees; it then discusses relying on complementary human-rights and transnational-crime treaties and interpreting UNCLOS as a living instrument.