Page 45 - KDU Law Journal Volume 4 Issue 2
P. 45
KDU Law Journal Volume 04 Issue II
September, 2024
International Refugee Laws
Historically, the League of Nations in the interwar period made
some efforts to respond to the situation of refugees first, introducing
the passport of Nansen for stateless persons. However, the current
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system of refugee protection can be attributed to be formed post 1945
and officially the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) was mandated and launched in the year 1950 to take the
leadership role in the global cooperation for protection of refugees and
to provide global solution to refugee problems. In the past decades,
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such instruments as the 1969 OAU Convention on Refugee Problems
in Africa and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees have
broadened the idea and the list of the means of protection for refugees
conforming to regional peculiarities.
Apart from the above, following international refugee laws act as
essential apparatus for preserving the people escaping persecution,
conflict, and violence in their route to becoming refugees. In the first
place, the legal system operates on the basis of the 1951 Refugee
Convention and its 1967 Protocol that lays the foundation of legal
procedures in the refugee rights and responsibilities.
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Definition and Scope
The main element of the international refugee laws is the definition
of a refugee contained in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under this
definition, a refugee is a refugee as a person who “owing to well-
founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion, is outside the country of their nationality and is unable or,
owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail themself of the protection
2 David James Cantor, ‘Reframing Relationships: Revisiting the Procedural Standards for
Refugee Status Determination in Light of Recent Human Rights Treaty Body Jurisprudence’,
(34(1), Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2015) 79-111.
3 Erika Feller at el, Refugee Protection in International Law: UNHCR’s Global Consultations
on International Protection (Cambridge University Press 2003) 62-84
4 James Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (Cambridge University
Press 2005) 150-178.
law.faculty@kdu.ac.lk
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