What Is Burden Sharing Definition

(i) Rationale: The Executive Committee of the UNHCR Programme (ExCom) has developed several conclusions that focus on or draw attention to the issue of burden-sharing. Among these, Conclusion 22 (XXXII) of the 1981 Executive Committee on the Protection of Asylum Seekers in Situations of Large Influx is of particular importance, as it explains the need for this concept and provides certain parameters for its implementation. He notes the following reason for burden-sharing: Fortunately, both organizations offer an approximate and ready opportunity to do so by breaking down defence expenditure data into their components: personnel, equipment, other (which consist mainly of operating and maintenance and operations and maintenance expenditures) and infrastructure. Eddy Malesky and I have demonstrated the benefits of using operating and maintenance expenses as an appropriate indicator of operational burden-sharing during NATO`s "out-of-area" phase. (iii) Burden-sharing in mixed migration movements: Mixed movements of refugees and economic migrants require a new approach to burden-sharing. Irregular displacement of large groups of people, some of whom are refugees or vulnerable asylum seekers, while others are driven by economic factors, poses a new challenge to governments. Governments of countries of origin, transit and destination must work with international organizations to address this complex problem, as these movements are cross-border in nature and therefore require international cooperation. So far, however, they have been treated as national security issues at the national level due to the criminal element associated with human trafficking. This has led to stricter border controls, which in turn have inadvertently led to the creation of more business for the traffickers themselves, as more and more people employ the traffickers to circumvent the above controls. The fact that refugees are sometimes forced to hire smugglers does not diminish their need for international protection. This must be taken into account when looking for solutions to deal with this problem.

(i) The regional context: in addition to the reference to international cooperation in the preamble to the 1951 Convention, the concept of burden-sharing is also included in many regional instruments. The phenomenon of the massive influx of refugees into Africa, resulting from the decolonization process in the 60s, led to the first substantial regional formulation of this concept in the context of refugees. Article II(4) of the 1969 Convention of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on the Specific Aspects of the Refugee Problem in Africa provides as follows: `Where a Member State encounters difficulties in continuing to grant asylum to refugees, that Member State may apply directly to the other Member States and, through the OAU and those other Member States, take appropriate measures in a spirit of African solidarity and international cooperation; the burden on the Member State granting asylum. The persistent debate over burden-sharing has its roots in the traditional theory of collective action – because of the size and global interests of the United States, according to theorists, NATO is subject to a "stowaway problem in which one ally relies on the defense supply of others to ensure its own security." However, there are idiosyncratic aspects of transatlantic burden-sharing. First, allies rarely engage in blatant "parasitism," but instead engage in "load transfer" or "maneuver to gain advantages, in the sense of avoided charges by transferring them to someone else." References to "burden-sharing", "responsibility-sharing" or what the Lisbon Treaty now prefers to call "solidarity between Member States" are often heard in the context of EU policy-making. Recently, these references have been important in the areas of financial rescues related to EMU, EU climate policy and Member States` defence cooperation. This article aims to contribute to the emerging debate on European burden-sharing by addressing the following questions: why and under what conditions does burden-sharing between Member States take place? Why are "burdens" so unevenly distributed and how can existing models of burden-sharing between states be explained? Why are effective and equitable effort-sharing systems so difficult to put in place? These questions will be addressed by first providing an overview of the theoretical debate on the motivations and mechanisms of burden-sharing in the EU; and secondly, by illustrating some of the challenges and limitations of fair burden-sharing in the case of refugee management in the EU. (iv) Lessons learned: all these approaches shared some common elements, including the modalities of close consultation and negotiated political consensus among the Governments concerned, a clearly defined and coordinated plan, cooperation between authorities based on the complementarity of mandates and responsibilities, a monitoring mechanism for monitoring and policy adaptation, and lead agency coordination. Effort-sharing agreements have been integrated into the systems, which have been tailored to the specificities of each case and have served as a guarantee of basic protection and respect for minimum asylum rights, while allowing for durable solutions. National dispersal practices were among the factors that led to proposals for burden-sharing at European level in the 1990s.

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