Mainstreaming Refugee Rights. The 1951 Refugee Convention and International Human Rights Law

This chapter reviews the protections under international law which purport to secure refugees’ right to seek asylum by protecting them from penalization. Once a mere administrative matter, irregular migration and presence are now often made a crime in domestic laws, often with additional criminal offences such as for failure to cooperate in migration and asylum proceedings, or failure to have or produce identity documentation. In addition to criminalization, States also have meted out increasingly harsh treatment to those who breach their migration controls, irrespective of whether they are refugees or not. The chapter then analyses article 31 of the Refugee Convention, the provision which purports to protect refugees from penalization for ‘illegal entry and stay’. It argues that non-penalization reflects one of the objects and purposes of the Refugee Convention. The chapter also explores whether international human rights law substantively limits States’ ‘right’ to criminalize irregular entry and stay, and whether non-penalization of irregular entry or stay may be an emerging general principle of law.

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Protected Groups in Refugee Law and International Law

Laws ◽

10.3390/laws8040025 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 25

Author(s):

Joseph Rikhof ◽

Ashley Geerts

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Criminal Law ◽

International Criminal ◽

International Criminal Law ◽

International Human Rights Law ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

International Human Rights ◽

Refugee Convention ◽

International Human

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Refugee Convention”) defines ‘persecution’ based on five enumerated grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, and political opinion. This list of protected groups has not changed in the nearly 70 years since its inception, although the political and social context that gave rise to the Refugee Convention has changed. This article examines how ‘membership in a particular social group’ (“MPSG”) has been interpreted, then surveys international human rights law, transnational criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law instruments to determine whether MPSG can encompass the broader protections afforded under other international law regimes. It concludes that the enumerated grounds are largely consistent with other instruments and protects, or at least has the potential to protect, many of the other categories through MPSG. However, as this ground is subject to domestic judicial interpretation and various analytical approaches taken in different countries, protection could be enhanced by amending the Refugee Convention to explicitly include additional protected groups from these other areas of international law, specifically international human rights law and international criminal law.

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Impacts of the interpretative interaction between international human rights law and the Refugee Convention

Cambridge International Law Journal ◽

10.4337/cilj.2021.01.05 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 96-120

Author(s):

Spyridoula Katsoni

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Decision Makers ◽

International Human Rights Law ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

International Human Rights ◽

Refugee Convention ◽

International Human ◽

Academic Debate

The article addresses the issue of interpretative interaction between international human rights law (IHRL) and the Refugee Convention against the background of an ongoing academic debate on the primacy or complementarity of the protection granted to refugees through IHRL. Specifically, it highlights the multifarious ways in which decision-makers and academics have sought interpretative guidance from IHRL in order to interpret the provisions of the Refugee Convention and vice versa. Moreover, it identifies the interpretative patterns to which this guidance has led. Ultimately, the article contributes to the debate through the identification of the impacts of interpretative interaction between IHRL and the Refugee Convention on the question of protection of refugees.

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International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons

10.1093/oso/9780198796015.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Michelle Foster ◽

Hélène Lambert

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Legal Framework ◽

International Human Rights Law ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

International Human Rights ◽

Refugee Convention ◽

Critical Gap ◽

Refugee Law ◽

International Human ◽

International Refugee Law

This book addresses a critical gap in existing scholarship by examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, in particular by examining the extent to which the 1951 Refugee Convention protects de jure stateless persons. It responds to the need for a coherent and inclusive legal framework to address the plight of stateless individuals who fear persecution. The central hypothesis of this book is that the capacity and potential of the 1951 Refugee Convention to protect stateless persons has been inadequately developed and understood. This is particularly so when we consider the significant transformation that has occurred over the past sixty years in delimiting state discretion in matters of nationality, including in relation to the acquisition and deprivation of nationality, and the treatment of non-nationals. While it may once have been correct to assume that matters of nationality were largely outside the realm of international law, the advent of international human rights law in particular has limited state sovereignty in this respect. Accordingly, whether a stateless person is also a refugee potentially admits of a very different answer in light of modern international human rights law as compared to 1951.

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