A Simple Solution to War Refugees? The Latin American Expanded Definition and its Relationship to IHL
15 Pages Posted: 7 Aug 2013
Date Written: February 5, 2013
Abstract
This paper explores how the expanded refugee definition offered by the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees protects war refugees. It thus contributes to an existing body of scholarship, which borrows considerably from international humanitarian law (IHL) to attempt to interpret the Cartagena definition. This paper seeks to differentiate itself from earlier studies by adopting a more contextual analysis that relates the expanded Cartagena definition to the Declaration’s wider approach to the protection of refugees fleeing war in Latin America. Through so doing, the paper illustrates more clearly the current role – and future potential - of IHL in determining the scope of the Cartagena definition.
Keywords: refugee law, asylum, Cartagena Declaration, Latin America, war refugees, international humanitarian law
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation