refugees

Unresolved amidst the Refugee Crisis Oscar-nominated documentary film Life Overtakes Me shines a light on the psychological and emotional distress suffered by refugee children.

The September 2015 Supreme Court judgment over the festering Chakma refugee issue turned the spotlight on one of the most intractable refugee issues in the history of post-independent India. Much like its first landmark verdict of 1996, this judgment also unequivocally upheld the refugees' right to Indian citizenship. Ironically, while the refugees have not benefited from the 1996 ruling over the last two decades, the verdict itself has come to attain the status of a "case law." This paper cogitates about the futility of a legal-centric approach to addressing an issue, which is deeply embedded in the complexity of state formation in modern South Asia. By unspooling the rather complex narrative of Chakmas' refugeehood and statelessness, it proposes a "solution of solidarity" approach that might help resolve what has until now proved irresolvable.

International Refugee Law: A Reader edited by B S Chimni; Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000; pp 613, Rs.695.

This article explores the impact of domestic violence on Asian immigrant and refugee women in New Zealand. Domestic violence needs to be recognised as abusive and as a crime. Asian men use violence as a way of securing and maintaining the relations of male dominance and female subordination, which is central to the patriarchal social order. It is essential that various theoretical works on domestic violence in New Zealand recognise and understand the variation in cultural and familial constraints experienced by different groups of ethnic-minority Asian immigrant and refugee women. Despite the fact that a wide range of interventionist services exist and there is a very progressive legislation against domestic violence in New Zealand due to various cultural and structural constraints, Asian women find it difficult to access them. This article examines these issues and in conclusion suggests that the Asian community take responsibility to address this issue as well as the perpetrators.