Non-Refoulement, Access to Procedures, and Responsibility for Determining Refugee Claims

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Abstract
States have failed to develop a co-operative system of sharing responsibility for fulfilling their obligations under international refugee law, and refugee law does not contain clear provisions identifying the individual State responsible for granting durable protection. Refugees are thereby trapped in a system where States' responsibilities for providing protection are not clearly defined. In such a situation the intricate notion of ‘first country of asylum’ has a crucial role to play. States may be inclined to treat the refugee protection system as a matter for relations between States, but refugee law is an inherent part of human rights law and so places the individual in the centre of any political strategy to tackle the problems of those forced to flee. Proper processing of an asylum seeker's individual claim, either concerning the merits of his or her claim or the circumstances in a given third State, is essential in order to reflect the inherent human rights element of refugee law. A prerequisite for individuals to claim their rights is a domestic institutional system through which this can be done, but which refugees have lost. Their basic right to belong to a political community is at stake and must be redressed by the international community

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