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5 - Nexus to civil or political status

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

James C. Hathaway  and
Michelle Foster
James C. Hathaway
Affiliation:
University of Michigan Law School
Michelle Foster
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

The text of the Refugee Convention requires that a person’s well-founded fear of being persecuted be “for reasons of” an enumerated ground: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. Under the Convention, if the peril a claimant faces – however wrongful it may be – cannot somehow be linked to her civil and political status and resultant marginalization, the claim to refugee status must fail. Put succinctly, refugee law requires that there be a nexus between who the claimant is or what she believes and the risk of being persecuted in her home state.

In practice the corollary is that many involuntarily displaced persons do not fall within the ambit of the Refugee Convention. As recognized by the drafters,

[t]he text…obviously did not refer to refugees from natural disasters, for it was difficult to imagine that fires, flood, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, for instance, differentiated between their victims on the grounds of race, religion, or political opinion. Nor did the text cover all man-made events. There was no provision, for example, for refugees fleeing from hostilities unless they were otherwise covered by Article 1 of the Convention.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Law of Refugee Status , pp. 362 - 461
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

References

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