Human Rights Law Commons^™

Smuggling Of Asylum-Seekers And Criminal Justice, Vladislava Stoyanova

Vladislava Stoyanova

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the legal implications for asylum-seekers flowing from their resort to falsified documents as a method of gaining access to the territory of asylum countries. Article 31(1) of the Refugee Convention is supposed to act as a shield against punishment for illegal entry. However, the paper identifies four issues relating to the application of Article 31 which make the functioning of the shield difficult. The first issue relates to the procedure of applying Article 31 and in particular the interrelationship between the refugee status determination procedure and the criminal procedure initiated as a …