Every discipline has its own terminology, and international law also has its own specialized language and set of technical terms. The definition of individual words and concepts does not normally cause any particular difficulty as long as practitioners of the given discipline apply and interpret them. However, when a definition is used by laymen on the relevant field of science, they may easily interpret a term or expression differently from its true meaning. From the perspective of international law, refugee is one of the most broadly interpreted concepts. Even though there is a specific legal definition, practitioners of other disciplines and users of common language tend to use the term “refugee” in a completely different meaning than it was defined in an international convention.
During the last decade, the international community witnessed many mass migrations. Civil wars and armed conflicts have served as catalysts for millions of people to leave their homes. As a result of the Syrian civil war in 2015 or the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, millions were forced to leave their places of residence temporarily or even permanently; however, people fleeing from certain atrocities cannot always be considered refugees. Nonetheless, common language still refers to people who have left their place of residence as a result of armed conflicts as refugees in the vast majority of cases, even though both EU and domestic law distinguish between other categories of protection for these people.
The 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees defines the concept of refugee relatively narrowly. According to Article 1 of the Convention, a person can be considered a refugee who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. The concept of refugee is defined in the EU directive on standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection, as well as Hungarian Act LXXX of 2007 on the right to asylum, using the wording.
It is clear from the definition of the Geneva Convention that, in the sense of international law, persecution due to a protected characteristic or a well-founded fear of persecution is an essential condition for refugee status. If a person does not meet the above conditions, even if he stays outside his own country and applies for protection in another country, he is not eligible for a refugee status. However, it should be emphasized that persons not entitled to refugee status are not necessarily left without protection either. In addition to refugee status, the above-mentioned qualification directive also provides for the legal institution of subsidiary or temporary protection.
The qualification directive, as well as the national laws of Member States, provides subsidiary protection for persons who do not qualify as refugees but who, if returned to their country of origin, would face a real risk of suffering serious harm, or, owing to such risk, are unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country. Hungarian law grants protected status to persons eligible for subsidiary protection. The legal status of protected persons is very similar to refugee status. The main difference between the two categories of protection is that, unlike refugees, protected persons do not have the right to vote, nor are they entitled to any preferential naturalization as refugees.
The third category of protection also known in EU law is the institution of temporary protection. Temporary protection may be granted to persons who were forced to flee their country due to armed conflict, civil war, ethnic clashes, and general, systematic or gross violations of human rights. Hungarian law grants asylum status to persons enjoying temporary protection based on the qualification directive.
Domestic law also recognizes accommodation as a category of protection. A foreign national may be granted the status of an accommodated person, if he does not meet the conditions for recognition as a refugee or a protected person, but in case of his return to his country of origin, there is a risk of persecution, execution, torture or other inhumane treatment due to racial or religious reasons, nationality, belonging to a specific social group, or political beliefs, and there is no safe third country to receive him.
In the individual protection categories, the exact term used has a substantive importance beyond the use of the correct terminology, because persons falling into different protection categories are granted different rights. Refugees and protected persons have almost the same civil and political rights and obligations as citizens of the host country, with the exception of rights that are not linked to citizenship. In contrast to refugees and protected persons, such broad rights are not granted to asylum seekers and accommodated persons. Persons falling into these protection categories are typically entitled to work, accommodation, financial support, and basic health benefits in accordance with the rules applicable to third-country nationals.
Not only the range of such rights, but also the duration of the exercise of those rights distinguish refugees from persons falling into other categories of protection. While the protection of refugees, protected persons, and accommodated persons is terminated only when objective conditions are met (e.g. they return to their country of origin or acquire a new citizenship), the protection of asylum seekers and persons under temporary protection terminates after one year (as the general rule).
The above summary shows that people who fled en masse from the Syrian conflict in 2015 were eligible for the status of protected persons, while those who left their place of residence as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict were eligible for protection as accommodated persons. Persons who migrated en masse as a result of the Syrian civil war fell into the protected category because they were exposed to indiscriminate violence, while those arriving from Ukraine received accommodated status because they were looking for a safe country due to the ravages of the war. Regardless to the above considerations, both the Hungarian domestic and international press preferred to refer, incorrectly, to the persons who left their places of residence as a result of the two conflicts as refugees.
Source of image: istockphoto.com
