Refugee Law at Sea
Development summary
In this International and Comparative Law Quarterly article, Richard Barnes considers the obligations of coastal and flag States towards asylum-seekers rescued at sea. Taking the Tampa incident—where disembarkation of 433 asylum-seekers on Christmas Island was prevented in August 2001—as its context, the article considers the rights of vessels and persons in distress, as well as questions of search and rescue and disembarkation, under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1951 Refugee Convention and other human-rights instruments. Barnes concludes that the law on search, rescue and refuge is highly unsatisfactory because key obligations are poorly defined and inadequately implemented, while humanitarian considerations receive insufficient weight; he also considers possible solutions.