Chapter

Non-refoulement between "common article 1" and "common article 3"

Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler

Refuge from inhumanity ? : war refugees and international humanitarian law

Leiden ; Boston : Brill Nijhoff, 2014

p. 386-408

English

The duty to ‘respect and ensure respect’ for the 1949 Geneva Conventions contains an implicit obligation not to refoule victims and potential victims of war. This is the bold contention developed by Ruvi Ziegler. His contribution considers the non-refoulement obligations of nonbelligerent states in on-going armed conflicts. The main claim of this chapter is that, in an armed conflict, where it is determined that violations of Common Article 3 are occurring, there ought to be a (rebuttable) presumption that all parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, whether engaged in that armed conflict or not, undertake not to return persons 'taking no active part in hostilities' fleeing such violations even if they fail to meet the 'refugee' definition in Article IA(2) of the Refugee Convention. Non-refoulement may thus be utilised to invoke the responsibility of parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions to protect civilians (of other states) from the harms of armed conflicts, thus making IHL, international criminal law and IRL mutually reinforcing.

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• Refuge from inhumanity ? : war refugees and international humanitarian law / ed. by David James Cantor and Jean-François Durieux