The Syrian crisis and the principle of non-refoulement

Abstract

Any discussion concerning refugees must begin with the right against forced return or non-refoulement found in the 1951 Refugee Geneva Convention. This article therefore first examines the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its application in the surrounding States of Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey (Section II). Particular attention is given to the new (2013) Turkish Law on Foreigners,which transposes many of the most important elements of the 1951 Refugee Convention into Turkish domestic law. The section then turns its focus to the so-called “nexus requirement” found in the 1951 Convention, examining the role this limitation might have in the Syrian context. The latter half of the article moves beyond the terms of the 1951 Convention to discuss parallel sources of protection, including prospects for a regional protection instrument (Section III), the principle of non-refoulement in general international human rights law (Section IV), customary international law (section V) and international humanitarian law (Section VI).