Thesis 100dpi

he will receive the rights granted to those with refugee
status. Having no legitimate refugee status inter alia
means the displaced person cannot obtain a refugee
travel document, and must remain in a country without
the ability to move freely.
2. PROTECTION
Travel document
Refugees are unlikely to be
able to obtain passports
from their state of nationality
(from which they have
sought asylum) and therefore
need travel documents
so that they might engage
in international travel.
The 145 states which are
parties to the 1951 Convention
Relating to the Status
of Refugees are obliged to
issue travel documents to
refugees lawfully resident
in their territory.
“No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’)
a refugee in any manner whatsoever 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 of political opinion.”
One of the rights of refugee status is that of “non-refoulement”,
or non-return. Host countries are not allowed
to return refugees or asylum seekers to a country
where they are liable to be subjected to persecution.
However, non-refoulement requires host countries only
to protect the displaced person from coming to harm
while inside its borders, with no obligation to assist the
person. It allows host countries to only grant temporary
shelter that can be revoked when it is decided the refugees
can go home.
When introducing the draft of the Geneva Convention
some 65 years ago, the UN’s first Secretary General
explained that “[t]his phase... will be characterized by
the fact that the refugees will lead an independent life
in the countries which have given them shelter. With the
exception of the ‘hard core’ cases, the refugees will no
longer be maintained by an international organization
as they are at present. They will be integrated in the
economic system of the countries of asylum and will
themselves provide for their own needs and for those of
their families.” This means refugees are granted social
and economic rights that allow them to, for example,
access education, to seek work and to start businesses.
However, in practice the situation is quite different:
most refugees today are not living independently and
are maintained by international aid organizations. Most
refugees today are emphatically not allowed to provide
for their own needs. They do not enjoy the ability to
move freely, as they are sentenced to refugee camps.
This situation is a clear violation of a right as granted to
them under international law.
Being ‘‘caged up’’ is unlawful and counterproductive,
making the refugees burdens of their hosts and the
international community. There is little possibility of
integrating into the new society, and the chances are
even slimmer for resettling or even returning home. The
Geneva Convention itself rejects a charity-based model
in favor of refugee empowerment.
In case of a refugee individual or a group reasonably
suspected of being a criminal and a threat to their safety
or security, it requires the exclusion from refugee status
and sending them away – even back to the country of
persecution .
3. INTERNATIONAL LAW
Whether or not the mandates of the Geneva Convention
will apply in a specific country depends on whether the
country has ratified. This becomes very important if we
concentrate on the ongoing Syrian crisis.
None of the people who fled to Lebanon, Jordan and
Iraq have a legal right to be recognized as refugees because
these countries are not signatories to the Geneva
Convention. Turkey, on the other hand, did ratify the
original Convention, but made an important exception
with the 1967 Protocol. Turkey did not accept the erasure
of regional exceptions – it agreed only to continue
to accept refugees from the Council of Europe. So technically,
Turkey recognizes only the original Convention
referring to Europe, and can only grant refugee status to
Europeans. Thus, people fleeing from Syria or elsewhere
into Turkey have no right to be recognized as refugees.
In the end, the perspective from Europe is that the
Middle East region is filled with refugees who become
migrants once they cross into Europe. This view seems
to miss the point that the region is filled with desperate
people who only have the chance to become refugees
once they cross into Europe, regardless of what they will
do afterwards.
81 DANGEROUS JOURNEY