Context

International refugee law has evolved in significant ways over the last fifty years, as it has been required to adapt to new and changing refugee situations and humanitarian challenges. The removal of dateline and geographical limitations by virtue of the 1967 Protocol, and developments in other bodies of international law, have ‘fundamentally transformed the 1951 Convention from a document fixed in a specific moment in history into a human rights instrument which addresses contemporary forms of human rights abuses’. The Preamble to the 1951 Convention calls on States ‘to assure refugees the widest possible exercise of [their] fundamental rights and freedoms’, necessitating an analysis of refugee law within the wider humanitarian and human rights context. International human rights law and international humanitarian law instruments complement the safeguards for refugees enumerated in the 1951 Convention. Importantly, these bodies of law reinforce the non-discriminatory basis of international law in general, which impacts on international refugee law in particular. The text, object and purpose of the 1951 Convention require that it be interpreted and applied in a non-discriminatory way. The codification of women's and children's rights has also substantially advanced understandings of equal treatment and equal rights within the international refugee protection framework. Age and gender perspectives have thus become important features of international refugee law over the last decade.

This paper will consider, in particular, Articles 1A(2), 1F and 1C, from these perspectives, thus complementing the other papers in this book.