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86 Nordic J. Int'l L. 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/nordic86 and id is 1 raw text is: NORDIC JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW OURNAL BRILL 86 (2017) 1-29 LAW NIJHOFF brili.corn/nord Wasted Lives. Borders and the Right to Life of People Crossing Them Thomas Spijkerboer Professor of Migration Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract States are obliged to protect the right to life by law. This article analyses the way in which states do this in the field of aviation law, maritime law and the law on migrant smuggling. A comparative description of these fields shows that states differentiate in protecting the right to life. Regular travellers benefit from extensive positive obliga- tions to safeguard their right to life, whereas the lives of irregularised travellers are protected first and foremost by combating irregularised migration and, if the worst comes to pass, by search and rescue. The right of states to exclude aliens from their territories leads to exclusion of irregularised travellers from their main positive obli- gations under the right to life. This situation is analysed through Zygmunt Bauman's notion of 'wasted lives'. The contrast with aviation and maritime law makes clear that this situation is the outcome of human choice, which can be changed. Keywords border deaths - migration - right to life - aviation law - maritime law - migrant smuggling i This article has been made possible by the dedicated research assistance of Anne de Hingh, Banafsheh Mogadassi Mahalatti and Judith Verbeek. It was inspired by critical feedback to the Human Costs of Border Control project by Marc Schuilenburg on 29 October 2013. Pieter Boeles has been crucial in overcoming blockades during the writing process. The draft has further benefited from the perceptive comments of an anonymous reviewer, and of Paolo Cuttitta, Marieke de Hoon, Lisa Komp, Pablo Mendes De Leon, as well as from the feedback during the Seventh Bergen aan Zee seminar on 2-3 June 2015, and during a seminar at the Law Faculty in Lund on 13 November 2015. Research for this article was conducted as part of the project 'Border Policies and Sovereignty: Human Rights and the Right to Life of Irregular Migrants; supported by Dutch NWO Vici grant number 453-12-004. KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2017 1 DOI 10.1163/15718107-08601004

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