The Refugee in Law

The 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees spells out that a refugee is someone who:

"owing to a 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 his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."

The UNHCR website adds this background:

The practice of granting asylum to people fleeing persecution in foreign lands is one of the earliest hallmarks of civilization. References to it have been found in texts written 3,500 years ago, during the blossoming of the great early empires in the Middle East such as the Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians and ancient Egyptians.

Over three millennia later, protecting refugees was made the core mandate of the UN refugee agency, which was set up to look after refugees, specifically those waiting to return home at the end of World War II.

The website, Migration Watch, highlights the 1951 Refugee Convention itself, which in Article 33.1 defines the principal obligation of Contracting States as follows: 

"No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." 

This means that any action by coast guards to push-back boats of refugees is illegal. I write this only a few days after the Greek Immigration Minister, Ioannis Mouzalas told BBC Newsnight that “The Minister of Interior of Belgium said Greece has to do push-backs into the sea. He said “go against the law, I don’t care if you drown them, we want push-backs”. 

The European Council for Refugees and Exiles website adds that:

All the EU Member States make a distinction between asylum seekers and refugees. An asylum seeker is a person submitting a request for refugee status. The asylum seeker is not granted refugee status unless the Member State decides they qualify, following a defined legal procedure.

Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states: “The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”.

We were told that the position with those fleeing Syria and Iraq is that Frontex (the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union  accepts them as refugees on proof of nationality and residence.