South Africa is seen as a major destination for refugees and asylum-seekers and is, according to the 2010 Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world’s highest destination country for asylum-seekers, mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa. Following the 1994 democratic elections, there was a transformation in foreign policy, embracing the African Agenda, and South Africa became a major country of destination because of its relative prosperity in Africa. As a State Party to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees, South Africa is under a legal obligation to protect refugees and grant them legal rights. At the same time, South African citizens, who had legitimate aspirations that the 1994 democratic government would address their development challenges, opposed the significant flow of refugees into the country by violent acts of xenophobia. The government, seen as a moral authority internationally with human rights being a key principle underpinning its foreign policy, found itself between the promotion of the African Agenda and its commitments to its own citizens. The refugee issue was addressed in the United Nations where the government made multilateral diplomacy a central platform of its foreign policy, a policy embedded in Africa and the South. South Africa is used as a case study to determine how it used multilateral diplomacy in the United Nations refugee regime through its coalition, the African Group, to address the migration issue. The study draws out the weaknesses of the international refugee regime by discussing the roles of two important diplomatic actors: the sovereign states in the United Nations General Assembly, and the international organization mandated to supervise the international refugee regime, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. South Africa’s foreign policy objective of promoting the African Agenda at times conflicts with the promotion of its national interest. Its progressive Constitution (1996) provides economic, social, and cultural rights to refugees, to the resentment of its own citizens, who view the refugees as beneficiaries of the United Nations. The study provides a critical analysis of South Africa’s multilateral diplomacy, and also provides the following recommendations where South Africa could use this mode more effectively to address the migration issue: Reform the international refugee regime; Allocate funds from the United Nations regularly assessed budget to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and, Develop an international normative regulatory framework for irregular migrants. / Dissertation (MDiplomatic Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Political Sciences / Unrestricted

Les sessions extraordinaires constituent une des innovations majeures de la réforme de 2006 qui a institué le Conseil des droits de l’homme, en tant qu’organe subsidiaire de l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies. Alors même que le Conseil tient trois sessions régulières chaque année, les sessions extraordinaires permettent aux Etats de réagir face à une situation de crise en organisant un débat, permettant d’évaluer et de qualifier les violations commises et mettant en place des mécanismes d’enquête et de suivi. L’analyse systématique des vingt-six sessions extraordinaires organisées depuis près de douze ans éclaire ainsi non seulement les rapports de force entre les acteurs en présence mais aussi une dynamique nouvelle du droit international public, intégrant le droit international humanitaire et le droit international pénal dans le champ de compétence du Conseil des droits de l’homme. / Special sessions are one of the major innovations of the reform that established the Human Rights Council in 2006 as a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly. While the Council holds three regular sessions each year, a special session allows States to respond to an urgent situation by organizing a debate, to assess and qualify violations and also to establish investigative mechanisms. The systematic analysis of the twenty-six special sessions held in nearly a period of twelve years illuminates, not only the balance of power between the actors involved, but also a new dynamic of international law, integrating international humanitarian law and international criminal law into the field of competence of the Human Rights Council.

Cette thèse se donne pour objet de tester, dans le contexte spécifique du droit français, la véracité et la pérennité des critiques féministe puis genrée de la définition du réfugié consistant à dénoncer la non-prise en compte des persécutions subies par les femmes et les minorités sexuelles dans le cadre de l’élection audit statut. Et c’est un constat mitigé qui ressort de l’étude car, en dépit des nombreuses pressions internationales et européennes invitant à une analyse genrée de la notion, ces critiques héritées des années 1980 apparaissent, dans une large mesure, encore d’actualité. Certes, le phénomène d’exclusion des persécutions liées au genre qu’elles dénonçaient s’est quelque peu affaibli, en ce que les persécutions subies par les femmes et les membres des minorités sexuelles ne sont, par principe, plus exclues du champ de la définition du réfugié. Mais il n’existe cependant toujours pas de volonté, politique ou juridictionnelle, visant à les intégrer pleinement dans l’analyse. En effet, les efforts consentis pour leur prise en compte se révèlent encore insuffisants, laissant demeurer des obstacles subtils à leur intégration, des obstacles d’autant plus délicats à identifier et à surmonter. / The purpose of this thesis is to test, in the specific context of French law, the veracity and durability of feminist and gendered review of the refugee definition, which consists in denouncing the failure to take into account persecutions suffered by women and sexual minorities in the election process. It is a mixed conclusion that emerges from the study because, despite the numerous international and European pressures calling for a gendered analysis of the concept, these criticisms inherited from the 1980s still appear, to a large extent, to be relevant. Admittedly, the exclusion of gender-related persecution that they denounced has somewhat weakened, because persecutions suffered by women and members of sexual minorities are no longer excluded, as a matter of principle, from the scope of the refugee definition. However, there is still no political or jurisdictional will to fully integrate them into the analysis. Indeed, the efforts made to take them into account are still insufficient, leaving subtle obstacles to their integration, obstacles that are all the more difficult to identify and overcome.