Migrant Rights and Migrant Wrongs. Bilateral Relations, Asylum and Security under the Safe Third Country Agreement

Over the past decades, there have been several amendments to the US and Canada's immigration and refugee policies, as well as major developments across the disciplines of international migration and refugee law. This study tackles the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between the US and Canada, which effectively entered into force in the year 2004. The study examines the trajectory of this agreement, the debates and arguments that surrounded it during its early stages, as well as how these debates have evolved alongside developing forced migration realities since the STCA's implementation. It looks into whether or not these developments challenge the STCA, render it ineffective, and consequently put US-Canadian relations into question. It addresses international mechanisms, local realities and bilateral factors, which contribute to the refugee/migration debate between the two states - namely the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. It aims to determine the extent to which the international refugee crisis, the Trump Administration, and developments in international law have affected the status of the STCA and subsequently, the relationship between the US and Canada.

Dr. Jasmin Lilian Diab (she/her) is a Canadian-Lebanese writer, researcher, university professor, editor and consultant in the areas of Migration, Gender and Conflict Studies. She currently serves as a tenured Assistant Professor of Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University's Department of Social Sciences. In previous roles, she served as the Refugee Health Program Coordinator at the American University of Beirut's Global Health Institute (GHI), as well as the MENA Regional Focal Point on Migration of the UN General Assembly-mandated UN Major Group for Children and Youth. She is a Senior Consultant on Refugee and Gender Studies at Cambridge Consulting Services, a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, a Scholar in Forced Displacement at University of Ottawa's Human Rights Research and Education Centre, and a Junior Fellow and Program Lead at the Global Research Network's 'War, Conflict and Global Migration' Think Tank. She holds a PhD in International Relations and Diplomacy with an emphasis on Asylum, Refugees and Security from the esteemed Center for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies (CEDS) of the School of Advanced International and Political Studies at INSEEC U. in Paris, and is the recipient of the CLS 2021 Bursary Award to complete her Postdoctoral research on 'Bridging the Gap between Social Protection and the Humanitarian Response in Times of COVID-19: The Case of Lebanon's Refugees and Good Practices' at LAU-University of Oxford's Centre for Lebanese Studies.