The second day of the expert roundtable addressed the cessation clauses of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, based on two discussion papers, ‘Current Issues in Cessation of Protection under Article 1C of the 1951 Convention and Article I.4 of the 1969 OAU Convention’, by Professor Joan Fitzpatrick and ‘When is International Protection No Longer Necessary? The “Ceased Circumstances” Provisions of the Cessation Clauses: Principles and UNHCR Practice, 1973–99’, by Rafael Bonoan. Participants were also provided with the UNHCR Guidelines on the Application of the Cessation Clauses and written contributions from: the Government of the Netherlands; Judge Bendicht Tellenbach, Swiss Asylum Appeal Commission; and Dr Penelope Mathew, Australian National University. NGO and other input was fed into the process in the course of the discussion. Professor Walter Kälin moderated the discussion.

The following Summary Conclusions do not represent the individual views of each participant or necessarily of UNHCR, but reflect broadly the issues emerging from the discussion.

State and UNHCR practice with respect to the cessation clauses

1. One of the objectives of the discussion was to understand why, overall, the cessation clauses under the 1951 Convention are little-used provisions by States. There was therefore considerable discussion across the range of issues which impact on the application of the cessation clauses. The emergent focus of the discussion was on the more complex issue of the application of Articles 1C(5) and (6).

2. […]