INTRODUCTION

The 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees does not contain a state obligation to allow for family reunification of refugees. In the Final Act of the Conference of Plenipotentiaries states are recommended to take the necessary measures to protect the family life of refugees. The right to family reunification has been discussed a lot ever since, but this has never resulted in a binding legal obligation to allow for family reunification in international law. The Human Rights Committee has held based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that states should take the appropriate measures ‘to ensure the unity or reunification of families, particularly when their members are separated for political, economic or similar reasons’. The Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) does contain an explicit reference to the importance of family reunification. In Article 10(1) it is stated that states shall deal with applications for family reunification by a child or his or her parents in a positive, humane and expeditious manner. In European human rights law, Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) protects the right to respect for private and family life. Even though no right to family reunification is provided for in the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has laid down specific safeguards for the exercise of the right to family reunification in the context of Article 8.

In European Union (EU) law, a substantive right to family reunification is laid down in the EU Family Reunification Directive (FRD). The Directive was adopted in 2003 and entered into force in 2005. It harmonises the right to family reunification in the EU and is applicable in all EU Member States, except Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom. It lays down that third-country national family members of third-country national sponsors residing lawfully on the territory of the Member States shall be granted family reunification if they comply with the substantive requirements that the Member States are allowed to impose in accordance with the Directive. The FRD includes a separate regime for persons who have been recognised as a refugee in the Member State concerned. The FRD is the only instrument in supranational law which grants a substantive right to family reunification to refugees.