The ‘Rule of Law’ is a sophisticated constitutional principle, crucial in many countries to the proper demarcation of the roles of national parliaments, the judiciary, and the executive structures. It is also, more broadly, a notion at the heart of national debates around certain of the more complex, multilateral issues confronting our modern world – terrorism, transnational crime, irregular migration and asylum among them.

If its importance is undisputed, in the experience of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) its nuances and permutations are nevertheless many. In some of the societies where we work, conflict or human rights violations have rendered the rule of law very relative, to a point where the machinery of protection and of justice have lost their legitimacy, if they continue to exist at all. The rule of law has painstakingly to be reconstructed, institution by institution, law by law, capacity by capacity. In certain other more developed societies, particularly where security is driving the operation of asylum systems, the rights of refugees are moving to the periphery of the rule of law notion. International law standards may be applied very inconsistently within and between countries; arbitrary detention, not subject to judicial review, is leaving many asylum seekers in a sort of legal limbo; and the world of borders can be particularly immune – with interception, turnarounds and refoulement taking place outside the frame of proper scrutiny.