Right to return

The right of return is a principle in international law which guarantees peoples right of voluntary return to or re-enter their country of origin or of citizenship. A right of return based on nationality, citizenship or ancestry may be enshrined in a country's constitution or law, and some countries deny a right of return in particular cases or in general.

The right is formulated in several modern treaties and conventions, most notably in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1948 Fourth Geneva Convention. The Geneva Conventions, it has been argued, have passed into customary international law and that the right of return is binding on non-signatories to the conventions.

The right of return is often invoked by representatives of refugee groups to assert that they have a right to return to the country from which they were displaced.

The right to leave ones country and return to it are regarded as human rights and based in natural law. In antiquity, the right to return was connected by philosophers with the right of travel.

There are various recorded cases in ancient history where people who had been deported or uprooted from their city or homeland were allowed (or encouraged) to return, typically when the balance of military and political forces which caused their exile had changed. However, in these cases the exiled populations were granted the option to return, it was never recognized that they had an inherent right to return.

A well-known example is the return to Zion, when King Cyrus the Great granted the Jews expelled from Judah to the Babylonian Exile to return to their ancestral homeland and rebuild Jerusalem. Recorded in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Ezra and Book of Nehemiah) this case is often cited as a precedent by modern Zionists and also inspired other groups seeking to pursue their own return.

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