Robust response to law school meet on refugee rights

The Tamil Nadu National Law School (TNNLS) has received 220 research papers from academicians, research scholars, professionals, policy-makers and students for the forthcoming National Conference on 'Citizenship, Refugees and Human Rights in the Contemporary World'.

TNNLS will be hosting the meet on January 20 and 21, 2018. The two-day event poised to witness the participation of eminent scholars in Constitutional Law envisages framing of suitable laws to address realities of problems associated with statelessness, Vice-Chancellor Kamala Sankaran, Conference Patron, said.

50 papers selected

Of the submitted papers, 50 have been selected for presentation after the abstracts were subjected to double blind peer-review based on relevance, methodology and originality. TNNLS intends to publish the selected papers in a book or CD or both with ISBN (International Standard Book Number).

With globalisation reflecting in citizens of one country migrating to another due to economic, social and other such reasons posing new challenges to traditional notions of citizenship, the concept of human rights has gained precedence.

The states are under obligation to uphold the human rights of not only its citizens, but also every person in its territory irrespective of the citizenships status, the organisers said.

And, there is always an inherent conflict between the duties of the state towards its citizens and obligations towards non-citizens. There is, hence, a need to analyse the problems faced by the refugees within the context of human rights law and constitutional law.

Although India is not a party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, there are several other instruments to which India is a party, and thus, it furthers the idea of combating statelessness, said the organisers. The impact of violence, war and persecution will also be discussed in the seminar.

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