POLICY BRIEF SERIES www.toaep.org By CHAO Yi FICHL Policy Brief Series No. 76 (2017) The Applicability of the Internal Relocation Principle to Cessation of Refugee Status: The Surrogate Nature of International Refugee Protection 1. Introduction The Internal Relocation Principle (‘IRP’), also known as the Internal Relocation/Protection/Flight Alternative, permits that refugee status not be granted to individuals who can find sufficient protection against the well-found- ed fear of persecution by relocating to an alternative area in his country of origin. Although without explicit ref- erence in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1 (‘1951 Convention’) and its 1967 Protocol, 2 the applicability of IRP has been firmly established in refugee status determination (‘RSD’) of States Parties to the 1951 Convention, 3 confirmed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (‘UNHCR’) official Guidelines, 4 and extended to the interpretation of non- refoulement obligations under human rights treaties. The 1951 Convention prescribes the inclusion, ces- sation, and exclusion of refugee status. The inclusion provision 5 (Article 1(A)(2)) defines a refugee as an indi- vidual who, owing to the well-founded fear of persecu- tion for reasons of race, religion, nationality, member- ship of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside his country of origin and unable or unwilling to 1 See http://www.legal-tools.org/doc/9b8e7a/. 2 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (http://www.legal- tools.org/doc/8f0728/). 3 Bríd Ní Ghráinne, “The Internal Protection Alternative Inquiry and Human Rights Considerations – Irrelevant or Indispensable?”, in International Journal of Refugee Law, 2015, vol. 27, p. 30. 4 Guidelines on International Protection: “Internal Flight or Reloca- tion Alternative” within the Context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refu- gees, UN Doc. HCR/GIP/03/04, 23 July 2003 (hereinafter ‘IFA Guidelines’). 5 Strictly speaking, Art. 1(A)(1) also includes refugees defined by six specific international instruments prior to the 1951 Convention. However, given that Art. 1(A)(1) has lost most of its practical rel- evance (Andreas Zimmermann (ed.), The 1951 Convention Relat- ing to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 279), the expression “inclusion provision” in this policy brief refers exclusively to Art. 1(A)(2). avail himself of the protection of that country. The cessa- tion provision (Article 1(C)) stipulates that a previously recognized refugee ceases to maintain refugee status when he is again able to be protected by his country of origin or obtains the protection of another country. The exclusion provision (Articles 1(F) and 33(2)) defines “some persons who face the real chance of being per- secuted nonetheless to be undeserving of international protection” 6 because they have committed international crime, committed serious nonpolitical crime outside the receiving State prior to being admitted as a refugee, been found guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and prin- ciples of the UN, or pose a danger to the security of the receiving State. The rationale behind the exclusion of refugee status is different from the inclusion and cessa- tion of refugee status, since the exclusion provision is “completely external to […] both the genuineness and the reasonableness of [the] fear of persecution”. 7 Current trends in academic commentaries and the UNHCR Guidelines link IRP exclusively to the inclu- sion provision of refugee status, applying IRP via the in- terpretation of “well-founded fear of being persecution” or “unable or unwilling to avail himself to the protection of the country of origin” in Article 1(A)(2). This policy brief argues that current trends mistakenly identify the text of the inclusion provision as the source of IRP’s le- gitimacy and therefore lose sight of the applicability of IRP to the cessation of refugee status. The legitimacy of IRP comes from the surrogate nature of international refugee protection, an underlying principle that inter- national protection only comes into play when “resort to national protection [of the country of origin] is not 6 James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Sta- tus, 2 nd edn., Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 524. 7 Federal Court of Canada, Court of Appeal, Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) v. Mehmet [1992] 2 F.C. 598, para. 10.
The Applicability of the Internal Relocation Principle to Cessation of Refugee Status: The Surrogate Nature of International Refugee Protection
Jul 11, 2023
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