Non-refoulement

Non-refoulement is a fundamental principle of international law which forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which they would be in likely danger of persecution based on “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” (See Article 33 below). Unlike political asylum, which applies to those who can prove a well-grounded fear of persecution based on certain category of persons, non-refoulement refers to the generic repatriation of people, including refugees into war zones and other disaster locales. It is a principle of customary international law, as it applies to states that are not parties to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or its . It is also a principle of the trucial law of nations.

In common usage, a push back is border control agents turning vessels around in international waters or expelling asylum seekers who have entered a border.

It is debatable whether non-refoulement is a jus cogens (peremptory norm) of international law that forbids the expulsion of a person into a jurisdiction, usually his or her home-country, where that person might be again subjected to persecution.

Though the principle of non-refoulement is a non-negotiable aspect of international law, states have interpreted this article in various ways and have constructed their legal responses to asylum seeker in corresponding manners. The four most common interpretations are:

The principle of non-refoulement arises out of an international collective memory of the failure of nations during World War II to provide a safe haven to refugees fleeing certain genocide at the hands of the Nazi regime. Today, the principle of non-refoulement ostensibly protects persons from being expelled from countries that are signatories to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, or the 1984 Convention Against Torture. This, however, has not prevented certain signatory countries from skirting the international law principle and repatriating or expelling persons into the hands of potential persecutors.

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Wikipedia