People on the move: legal & HR responses: Asylum and Refugee Law

The materials are structured around four key questions: who is a refugee, what rights do they have, what are transit states’ obligations, and what are the duties of the state where a refugee applies for asylum. Other useful resources are linked to at the bottom of the page.

This Convention defines the term "stateless person" as "a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law" (article 1). The convention defines the obligations of states to these people and their status. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) web site provides access to the 1954 Convention, States Parties, declarations and reservations, and other information.

This Declaration provides for the mutual respect among States of other States' decisions to grant asylum to persons fleeing persecution. It proscribes the expulsion or return of such persons to States where they may be persecuted. However, persons who have committed war crimes, or crimes agains peace or humanity, are not entitled to a grant of asylum.

This Declaration guarantees to non-nationals ("aliens") a number of fundamental rights, such as life and security, privacy, fair treatment before tribunals, freedom of conscience and religion, peaceful assembly, and others. It proscribes torture and cruel punishment of non-nationals. It also expressly precludes the legitimization of the illegal entry of aliens into a State, and requires their observance of the laws of the State in which they are present.

The Guiding Principles "identify rights and guarantees relevant to the protection of persons from forced displacement and to their protection and assistance during displacement as well as during return or resettlement and reintegration." (Intro., sec. 1.)
The Principles are available online in several languages in PDF format.
In 2000, ASIL and the Brookings Institution published Annotations to the Guiding Principles by Walter K�lin in Stud. in Transnat'l Legal Pol'y, no. 32, available online in PDF. Two OCHA volumes relating to the Guiding Principles are the Manual on Field Practice in Internal Displacement (large PDF file) and the Handbook for Applying the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (large PDF file), prepared by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacment. Further information and documentation pertaining to internally displaced persons may be found at ReliefWeb.

EDAL summarises relevant case law in English and the Member State’s national language and provides a link to, and/or pdf. of, the full text of the original judgment where available.

EDAL was created through funding from European Commission’s European Refugee Fund. Its creation was coordinated by the Irish Refugee Council in partnership with the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE); the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) also joined as partners during the second phase of development. EDAL’s objective is to strengthen the development of harmonized standards of protection within the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and, in particular, to increase consistency and quality in the interpretation and application of CEAS legislation.

Currently the database is managed by ECRE and is being provided with financial support from the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Union.

The primary audience is decision-makers at all levels, practitioners, academics and policy makers. EDAL aims to foster deeper cooperation amongst decision-makers and practitioners in Member States. The database contains case summaries from the following Member States:

Austria
Belgium
The Czech Republic
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
The Netherlands
Poland
Slovenia
Slovakia
Spain
Sweden
UK