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International Journal of Refugee Law Advance Access published online on February 9, 2007
International Journal of Refugee Law, doi:10.1093/ijrl/eel025
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

Human Rights, Free Movement, and the Right to Leave in International Law: ‘Liberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person.’1

COLIN HARVEY 1 and ROBERT P. BARNIDGE JR. 2

1 Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre, Queen's University Belfast. An earlier version of this article, ‘The Right to Leave One's Own Country Under International Law', was prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration, September 2005
2 BA, summa cum laude, University of Notre Dame, 1999; JD, University of North Carolina, 2003; LLM Public International Law, University of Amsterdam, 2004; PhD Candidate, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, research commenced October 2004. Mr. Barnidge would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme and Queen's University Belfast to his current research


  Abstract

This article starts from a rights-based premise: freedom of movement is an established human right recognised in a range of international instruments. The right to leave one's own country is one aspect of this general concern with free movement. This article addresses the status of this right under international law, a right that is enshrined in several different international instruments and has attracted considerable attention. This article explores how the Human Rights Committee, the only United Nations human rights treaty body that has examined the right to leave in significant detail, has interpreted this right in light of state practice. This article considers whether international law requires, or allows, states to prevent their nationals from leaving their own states by unauthorized or irregular means and whether such prevention could be construed as a violation of the right to leave. This article also examines whether states can legitimately prosecute migrants when they leave their own states with documents that they know to be fraudulent. The legitimacy of exit visas and regulations related to holders of state secrets is also explored. Finally, this article presents some thoughts on the continuing significance of the right to leave.

1General Comment No. 27, para. 1 (1999), available at http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/6c76e1b8ee1710e380256824005a10a9?Opendocument.
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