In the last decade, a record number of people have left their homes for reasons as varied as internal violence, economic instability, and climate change. Facing large numbers of people hoping to get in, more affluent states have had a growing interest in regulating their borders to safeguard national security. The task of protecting domestic, economic, and security interests with international human rights commitments has fallen to courts. The concepts of “refugee” and “migrant” have been twisted in international courts in cases regarding interdiction at sea.
United Nation’s refugee agency (UNHCR) reported that global refugee figures, caused by the war in Syria and other instabilities in the Middle East and Africa, cross 50 million people—the highest since World War I. It’s not surprising then, that there has been a comparable rise in people attempting to enter the European Union to seek for refuge, many embarking on life threatening voyages across the Mediterranean to find themselves a safer place.
Who are refugees?
According to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under Article 1(A)2, the term “refugee” shall apply to any person who:
“...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, …show more content…
However, they are different in many ways. First, IDPs are not the subject of a treaty adopted at the international level, although the Guiding Principles are based on binding international human rights and humanitarian law. Second, unlike refugees, IDPs have not crossed an international border from their country of origin. Third, the definition of IDPs in the Guiding Principles is significantly loose as compared to the definition of refugees, even those displaced by armed conflict, human rights violations and climate change, while the refugee definition is limited to those with a rational fear of being persecuted on at least one of five