This chapter takes up the provisions of the Convention that deem some persons who face the real chance of being persecuted nonetheless to be undeserving of international protection. Inspired by the prohibition in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the granting of asylum “in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations” and following the precedent of the Constitution of the International Refugee Organization, persons seeking to evade legitimate prosecution or punishment for serious domestic crimes, those who have committed serious international crimes, and anyone who is guilty of actions contrary to the principles and purposes of the UN must be denied refugee status.

The decision to exclude these three limited categories of persons from refugee status – even assuming they face the real chance of being persecuted – followed in part from concern to ensure that serious criminals not be able to evade prosecution and punishment for their crimes by claiming asylum. But most fundamentally, the drafters were persuaded that if state parties were expected to admit serious criminals as refugees, they would simply not be willing to be bound to the Convention. France, the most ardent advocate of this view, insisted that the right to exclude limited categories of serious criminals from refugee status was “a prime factor in determining France’s attitude towards the Convention as a whole.” The Yugoslav drafter feared that without a rule on exclusion “there would be a good chance that [his government] would be unable to sign the Convention.” Even the British and Belgian representatives, despite their initial opposition to such a provision, ultimately conceded that the exclusion of serious criminals from refugee status was necessary “to promote maximum adherence to the Convention” and “to make the Convention acceptable to as large a number of governments as possible.” Thus, as the Court of Justice of the European Union determined, the fundamental purpose of Art. 1(F) is essentially instrumentalist, to “maintain the credibility of the protection system.”