Non-refoulement

Non-refoulement

Non-refoulement is a principle in international law, specifically refugee law, that concerns the protection of refugees from being returned to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened. Unlike political asylum, which applies to those who can prove a well-grounded fear of persecution based on membership in a social group or class of persons, non-refoulement refers to the generic repatriation of people, generally refugees into war zones and other disaster areas.

Non-refoulement is a jus cogens (peremptory norm)[citation needed] of international law that forbids the expulsion of a refugee into an area where the person might be again subjected to persecution.

Contents

History

The principle of "refoulement" was officially enshrined in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and is also contained in the 1967 Protocol and Art 3 of the 1984 Torture Convention.

The principle of non-refoulement arises out of an international collective memory of the failure of nations during World War II to provide a safe haven to refugees fleeing certain genocide at the hands of the Nazi regime. Today, the principle of non-refoulement ostensibly protects recognized refugees and asylum seekers from being expelled from countries that are signatories to the 1951 Convention or 1967 Protocol. This has however not prevented certain signatory countries from skirting the international law principle and repatriating or expelling bona fide refugees into the hands of potential persecutors.

Tanzania's actions during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda have been alleged to have violated the nonrefoulement principle. During the height of the crisis when the refugee flows rose to the level of a "mass exodus," the Tanzanian government closed its borders to a group of more than 50,000 Rwandan refugees who were fleeing genocidal violence. In 1996, before Rwanda had reached an appropriate level of stability, around 500,000 refugees were returned to Rwanda from Zaire.

One of the grey areas of law most hotly debated within signatory circles is the interpretation of Article 33. Interdiction of potential refugee transporting vessels on the high seas has been a common practice by the U.S. government in particular, raising the question of whether Article 33 requires a refugee to be within a country or simply within the power of a country to trigger the right against refoulement.

Since 1951, 140 states have signed the Convention, officially recognizing the binding principle of non-refoulement expressed therein.

An example of the modern application the principle can be found in Israel. Israel closely follows the non-refoulement principle and does not repatriate the thousands of refugees from Sudan and Eritrea in Israel, in particular refugees from the Darfur conflict in Western Sudan.

Literature

  • Kees Wouters International legal standards for the protection from refoulement - a legal analysis of the prohibitions on refoulement contained in the Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture, Antwerpen: Intersentia, 2009
  • Guy S. Goodwin-Gill & Jane McAdam The refugee in international law, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007 (prev. 1983, 1996)
  • Académie de Droit International de La Haye / Hague Academy of International Law Le droit d'asile = The right of asylum, Dordrecht: Nijhoff (1990)

References


External links


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • non-refoulement — /nɒn rəˈfulmənt/ (say non ruh foohlmuhnt) noun the principle that refugees or asylum seekers should not be forcibly returned to their country of origin. {non + refoulement} …  

  • REFOULEMENT — Opération constitutive de l’inconscient, le refoulement a été repéré par Freud dès ses premières observations cliniques. Il consiste à maintenir ou à repousser dans l’inconscient des représentations liées à des pulsions, capables, si elles… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Refoulement originel — Refoulement originaire Le refoulement originel fonde l inconscient dans la première topique freudienne. L inconscient se constitue en effet au moment où les traces mnésiques sont oubliées ou refoulées. Sommaire 1 Le refoulé 2 Représentant… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Refoulement sexuel — Refoulement originaire Le refoulement originel fonde l inconscient dans la première topique freudienne. L inconscient se constitue en effet au moment où les traces mnésiques sont oubliées ou refoulées. Sommaire 1 Le refoulé 2 Représentant… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Refoulement — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Refoulement (homonymie). Le refoulement (traduit de l allemand : Unterdrückung, Verdrängung) est un des concepts majeurs de la psychanalyse développés par Sigmund Freud. Sommaire 1 Mécanisme de défense …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Refoulement originaire — Le refoulement originel (traduit de l allemand : Urverdrängung) fonde l inconscient dans la première topique freudienne. L inconscient se constitue en effet au moment où les traces mnésiques sont oubliées ou refoulées. Sommaire 1 Le refoulé… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • RÉFUGIÉS — On a estimé à dix neuf millions pour 1992 le nombre des réfugiés dans le monde, dont la plus grande part concerne les pays les plus pauvres. Peut être la situation a t elle paru plus tragique à certaines époques, notamment aux lendemains de la… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (and protocol)   parties to only the 1951 Convention …   Wikipedia

  • Russian Federation Law on Refugees — The Russian Federation’s Law on Refugees defines who is a “refugee” for purposes of obtaining asylum in the country. Russian Federation Law No. 95 F 3 “On Refugees,” February 19, 1993, as amended (Law on Refugees), available in Russian at… …   Wikipedia

  • Refugees —    In earlier times, both the Ottoman and Persian empires deported large numbers of Kurds from their historic homelands in an attempt to control them better. More recently, the modern Republic of Turkey has also internally displaced many ethnic… …   Historical Dictionary of the Kurds

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