WHO IS A REFUGEE?

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Refugee

Only a person outside her own state can qualify as a Convention refugee. 

Refuse law may be the world's most powerful international human rights mechanism. Not only do millions of people invoke its protections every year in countries spanning the globe, but they do so on the basis of a self-actuating mechanism of international law that, quite literally, allows at-risk persons to vote with their feet. This is because, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ("UNHCR") has insisted, refugee status is not a status that is granted by states; it is rather simply recognized by them: 

"A person is a refugee within the meaning of the 1951 Convention as soon as she fulfills the criteria contained in the definition. This would necessarily occur prior to the time at which her refugee status is formally determined. Recognition of her refugee status does not therefore make her a refugee but declares her to be one. She does not become a refugee because of recognition, but is recognized because she is a refugee." UNHC, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, UN Doc. HCR/IP/4/Eng/REV.3 (2011). 

A person who is a refugee at international law is thus entitled in any of the nearly 150 state parties to the refugee regime to claim a powerful catalog of internationally binding rights - including not only critical civil rights, but also socio-economic rights and rights that enable pursuit of a solution to refugeehood. (Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted Jul. 28, 1951, entered into force Apr. 22, 1954.)

Because refugee status inheres by virtue of facts rather than formalities, the entitlement to these rights persists until and unless an individual is found not be a refugee. (J.C. Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005).