Laws of Unintended Consequence? Nationality, Allegiance and the Removal of Refugees During Wartime

Abstract

Do the laws of war allow parties to an armed conflict to remove civilians from their territory? In attempting to provide an answer to this carefully delimited question, the present chapter engages with the important wider debate about regime interaction between international humanitarian law (IHL) and refugee law. Whereas each body of international law has traditionally been viewed as having a distinct field of application, the present chapter shows that during times of war they do apply simultaneously to the same subjects. Nonetheless, it is argued here that the shared underlying concepts of ‘nationality’ and ‘allegiance’ provide an important bridge between the distinct legal frameworks that allows them to operate in a largely complementary way.

Keywords: refugees, refugee law, international humanitarian law, civilians, deportations, transfers, removals, nationality, allegiance