5.4.7.6   Rights of Refugees or Asylum-Seekers

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Appendix 1) states that:

“Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

The subsequent Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951,[1] as extended in 1967, defined refugees as people who fear persecution in their countries of origin; it assigned rights to them in the destination country.  It was signed by more than 140 countries. 

The Convention was not a legal obligation on any one country to accept refugees, but it referred to a need for international co-operation in settling them and provided an agreed mechanism for doing so.  It also guaranteed that the refugees would not be sent back to their countries of origin if their reasons for fleeing were found to be genuine. 

The signatories to the Convention have thus collectively committed themselves to a legally-binding framework for taking refugees, and have explicitly recognised the moral obligation to do so, without placing a legal obligation on the refugee’s destination of choice.  The final decision to accept them is moral and political.