Main Debate
What justifies the difference in protection offered to those persons who cross an international border and those who do not?
Main Points
- 1951 Geneva Convention applies to a subset of the displaced
- Underlying legal and practical motivations of state parties for requirement that refugees cross international borders
- UNHCR’s increased involvement in assistance to IDPs
Readings
Core
- J. Hathaway and M. Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, 2nd edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 17-23. [J. Hathaway, The Law of Refugee Status (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991), pp. 29–33.]
- A. Shacknove, ‘Who Is a Refugee?’, Ethics, vol. 95, no. 2 (January 1985), pp. 274–284.
Extended
- A. Zimmerman, C. Mahler, ‘Article 1A, Paragraph 2’, in A. Zimmerman (ed.), The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and Its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), pp. 441–443.
Editor’s Note
In 1951, the conceptual scope of international law was much more limited than it is today. Many then viewed international law as limited to duties between states that lacked the competence to impose duties on states regarding their own nationals. There is also a sort of common sense notion that those who are outside of their own borders and fear persecution by authorities within their own state are quite clearly and visibly in need of international protection. The requirement that, individuals must be outside their own state in order to qualify as a refugee accomplished multiple goals:
- Reduced the number of displaced persons that the international community needed to address.
- Prevented states from shifting responsibility for large parts of their own populations to the international community.
- Prevented states from violating the territorial sovereignty of other states on the pretext of responding to a refugee problem.
- Furnished a prominent example of the limited reach of international legal obligations and duties.
See Section I.4.1 concerning IDPs.
