UNHCR Protection Manual - Related sources

This paper provides a historical background to the Cartagena Declaration, including the process of its adoption, its content and the way it was initially understood and applied. It then provides an overview of the extent and manner in which Latin American countries have formally incorporated the regional refugee definition into their national legal frameworks and describes the core findings of state practice in relation to the regional refugee definition. The paper concludes with a short reflection for future initiatives aimed at reinvigorating international protection and reviving some of the aspirations that made the Cartagena-inspired process so important throughout the region.

Given the changes in the causes, character and effects of armed conflict and other situations of violence in Africa since the adoption of the 1969 Convention, the paper is primarily interested in how the 1969 Convention’s regional refugee definition is applied by States in individual RSD procedures in the modern context.

This study explores the variety of ways in which states have provided protection from removal for individuals falling outside the scope of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol. The aim is to inform UNHCR’s recommendations on the principles to be articulated in the proposed ExCom conclusion. From the outset, the study recognises that ‘complementary protection’ is not a term of art defined in any international instrument, rather a phrase which has emerged over the last decade to describe an increasingly-apparent phenomenon in industrialised countries of relief from removal/deportation being granted to asylum seekers who have failed in their asylum claim.

This paper attempts to point out the risks of undermining the primacy of the Refugee Convention, and at the same time suggest various mechanisms or safeguards that may contribute to reducing the risk. Furthermore, the author discusses some issues that have to be settled in preparing the future community instrument, in terms of delimiting the beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and deciding the standards of treatment accorded to such persons.