The Duty to Rescue Refugees

International refugee law is ill-equipped to deal with large-scale movements of refugees as a solidarity matter. Through work spanning three decades, Guy S Goodwin-Gill has diagnosed this problem and developed a remedial doctrine around the principle of ‘temporary refuge’. This article offers a critical reflection on this doctrine, arguing that, as long as emphasis is placed on non-refoulement as the primary duty of frontline States, they will contest a regime they perceive as fundamentally unfair. The general duty is not to admit refugees on the territory of a particular State, much less to refrain from returning them to risk, but to rescue them from imminent peril. This ‘rescue’ paradigm, building upon the dominant discourse of ‘disaster’ and ‘emergency’, can bolster the international refugee regime in several ways. The article surveys the international regime of rescue at sea as a framework of reference, and explores the potential of international disaster response law, international humanitarian law, and the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine for framing a collective duty to rescue refugees. While there is no obvious ‘home’ for such a duty, it is possible to sketch out a procedural/institutional approach to it, revolving around a revamped model of comprehensive plan of action.