The Law of Asylum

Notwithstanding the recent drafting of domestic refugee laws in a number of Asian jurisdictions, it remains the region of the world with the lowest proportion of state parties to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and relatively few states make explicit provision in their domestic laws for the rights of refugees. In such an environment the utility of legal frameworks and processes has been questioned. However, notwithstanding the lack of explicit refugee protection, many Asian jurisdictions have alternate international obligations (for example, under international humanitarian law) and domestic provisions (for example, under constitutional or administrative law) that may operate to provide protection to refugees. This project seeks to assess whether these alternate frameworks can operate to create a legal framework (a “law of asylum”) that can offer protection to refugees within Asian jurisdictions; this project further seeks to explore the extent that this framework (the “law of asylum”) can be deployed in legal processes to provide protection to refugees.