Immigration in Europe - HumanitarianNet - Universidad de Deusto

BUILDING A RIGHTS BASED ASYLUM SYSTEM FOR EUROPE: A UNHCR PERSPECTIVE 43Amsterdam, make the building of a common European asylum system,as said earlier, a difficult task, which requires a solid legal frameworkand a firm and clear common understanding of the premises uponwhich it is built.From the perspective of UNHCR, the motive for developing acommon asylum system is the need to provide a predictable andstructured framework for ensuring effective international protection ofpersons whose life or liberty is at risk in their country of origin. When aperson must, out of necessity, exercise his or her human right to seekasylum, that person’s treatment and fate at the hands of a State are amatter of international law and obligations, not a matter of the State’sdiscretionary immigration policy. The scope and content of a commonEuropean asylum system must be determined, therefore, against thebackdrop of established principles and standards of internationalrefugee and human rights law.The construction of a coherent, rights-based asylum system restson certain assumptions. The UNHCR Bureau for Europe sets out sevenpremises in this area (UNHCR, unpublished).First, the scope of the 1951 Convention is a matter of internationallaw. Therefore, its interpretation is not, or should not be, subject tovariations on the basis of the history, legal culture or political necessityof each State Party to the Convention. As observed, for instance, bythe UK House of Lords (2000), “in principle there can only be one trueinterpretation of a treaty” and “there is not a band of permissiblemeanings of Article 1A(2) [of the 1951 Convention].” As such, the1951 Convention must be given an “autonomous and internationalmeaning” derivable from the sources mentioned in Articles 31 and 32of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. 1Second, the true meaning of the refugee concept must be determinedindependently from the financial or other costs attaching to the grantingof asylum, the management issues pertaining to asylum procedures, orany other limitations on a State’s capacity to meet internationalobligations as regards the treatment of refugees. The level of legalobligations that a State Party has to assume once it grants refugeestatus cannot be a justifiable ground to circumscribe the internationallyagreedrefugee definition in a narrow conception which limits the1 According to the House of Lords, one such source that should be relied on for theenquiry into the “true autonomous meaning” of the refugee concept is the UNHCRHandbook, because of its “high persuasive authority” and the fact that it constitutes“good evidence of what has come to be international practice within Article 31(3)(b) ofthe Vienna Convention.”