Complementary Protection in International Refugee Law

Abstract

This book considers the legal obligations countries have to people who do not meet the legal definition of a ‘refugee’, but who have been forcibly displaced from their homes. This is known as ‘complementary protection’, because it complements the central international instrument in this area, the 1951 Refugee Convention. Chapter 1 identifies pre-1951 examples of complementary protection, demonstrating how the content of the status afforded to extended categories of refugees was historically the same as that granted to ‘legal’ refugees. It traces unsuccessful attempts at the international and European levels to codify a system of complementary protection, prior to the EU's adoption of the Qualification Directive in 2004 and international support for an ExCom Conclusion in 2005. The Qualification Directive, examined in Chapter 2, represents the first supranational codification of complementary protection, but is hampered by a hierarchical conceptualization of protection that grants a lesser status to beneficiaries of ‘subsidiary protection’ vis-à-vis Convention refugees. Chapters 3 to 5 examine a number of human rights treaties (CAT, ECHR, ICCPR, and CRC) to identify provisions that may give rise to a claim for international protection. Chapter 6 illustrates why all persons protected by the principle of non-refoulement should be entitled to the same legal status as refugees, demonstrating the Refugee Convention's role in providing a rights blueprint for beneficiaries of complementary protection.

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