Refugee Status Determination Legal Framework and Human Rights: Constructing the Productive Other within the Frontier Justice

Abstract

The refugees are on the tassels of municipal and international legal systems since the adoption of an international legal framework secured as the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (UNCSR) that has been developed to provide refugees some protection which is now debated to address all their grievances including the refugee status determination (RSD) in every nook and corner of the world. RSD is the process whereunder states and UNHCR determine who are entitled to have the benefits of refugee protection. The RSD process facilitates the accomplishment of their global human rights obligations to the beneficiaries under the international refugee protection regime. It is a platitude of international refugee law (IRL) that RSD does not bestow status on a refugee but merely validates it. In performing the RSD obligations, it is the treatment that is meted out to refugees and outsiders in our midst within the UNCSR refugee definition. The instant research paper addresses the issues of critical spaces in the RSD system based on the grounds envisaged in the refugee definition that poses challenges, risks, and responses for a cosmopolitan purpose. There is also a sovereignty narrative that has made the human rights subservient and the menace of persecution is being ignored within the synthesis of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Refugee Law (IRL). However, there is also a pressing question of a legal framework for the protection of refugees frontier justice for them globally that address every aspect of the refugee problem from registration and determination of status, to repatriation, resettlement and legal and political protection reassessment, interpretation, responses, risks, and challenges worldwide.

Keywords: Human Rights, Refugee Status Determination, United Nations