Erschienen in:U of Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper ; No. 430
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource (64 p)
Sprache:
Englisch
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments November 16, 2009 erstellt
Beschreibung:
The paper's thesis is that recent scholarly claims that a general right to asylum now exists are unfounded. The legal arguments underpinning the claim are twofold. First it is said that even states not bound by relevant conventions are nonetheless required by customary international law to honor the duty of non-refoulement in relation to refugees and others facing the prospect of serious harm. Second, the lex specialis principle is invoked to argue that all persons entitled to protection against refoulement (not just refugees) must be granted all of the refugee-specific entitlements codified in the Refugee Convention. Taken together, the two claims amount to an assertion that there is today a legally binding and universally applicable right to asylum for all seriously at-risk persons. Although both claims have normative appeal, the author contends that as a matter of international law they are conceptually flawed. Taking account of relevant ICJ jurisprudence, the paper argues that there is neither opinio juris nor relatively consistent state practice to support the putative duty of non-refoulement. And even if there were such a norm in customary international law, the lex specialis principle exists only to resolve normative conflict, not to fill a normative void, and therefore affords no basis for the attribution to non-refugees of Refugee Convention rights. In short, there is no leveraged right to asylum