Event Date: February 14, 2024 - 11:30am to 1:00pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the Security Studies Network

The “safe third country” concept emerged in the global asylum governance scene in the late 1980s as an effort to prevent secondary movement of refugees, after they flee persecution and find safety at the closest instance possible. Despite being promoted as a responsibility-sharing tool by its proponents, in reality, safe third country practices aggravate the rights violations that refugees face and obstruct their access to asylum. This talk offers a comparative analysis of safe third country practices in the EU-Turkey and Canada-USA contexts, especially in consideration of the recent amendment of Canada-USA Safe Third Country Agreement in 2023. The comparison is based on dynamics surrounding the two asylum spaces and impacts of safe third country practices on mobility trajectories. Parallel efforts in the Global North demonstrate a common pattern in the global asylum regime towards reinforced containment of human mobility.

Speaker:

Gamze Ovacık is the Steinberg Postdoctoral Fellow on Migration Law at McGill University Faculty of Law and at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, as well as an assistant professor at Başkent University Faculty of Law. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Gothenburg within the ASILE Project on global asylum governance and the European Union’s role. She has been working with UNHCR, IOM and ICMPD Turkey offices on various projects. Her current research within the migration and asylum field focuses on safe third country practices, externalization policies, legal responsibility attribution and judicial practices.

Discussant:

Christina Clark-Kazak is a Full Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

Chair:

Philippe Frowd is an Associate Professor at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa.