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Abstract

This Comment addresses the rules and customs of international law that govern forcibly displaced persons, and how such laws have created wide gaps that have allowed the issues and challenges surrounding forced migration to not only persist, but also become increasingly worse. Specifically, Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides, "everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution," but places no accompanying obligation upon States to grant asylum and refugee status to these forcibly displace persons. Rather, States are given significant discretion when interpreting and defining responsibilities under Article 14. The gap between the right to seek asylum, guaranteed by Article 14, and the discretionary obligation of States leaves forcibly displaced persons asserting the right upon a State that has no obligation to them. In this view, the right of asylum belongs to the State rather than the forcibly displaced person. Additionally, the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees requires three elements to be met for a forcibly displaced person to be considered a refugee, which leaves many forcibly displaced persons outside the scope of the definition despite finding themselves in refugee-like circumstances. The limited scope of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is illustrated by the fact that it does not provide for forced displacement caused by armed conflict, severe economic insecurity, environmental degradation, and other failures of governance. Lastly, there is no single body of a comprehensive international legal framework that governs forced displacement, but rather it is scattered across various instruments of international law. The lack of a single governing framework makes regulating and enforcing forcibly displaced persons' rights difficult.

The current international legal regime that governs forcibly displaced persons lacks sufficient safeguards for the fundamental right to seek asylum and fails to encompass many individuals in refugee-like situations under its limited scope. To achieve a more equitable and remedial legal regime, the definition of a refugee needs to be re-defined to cancel out the failure of the current definition's limited scope. Further, the obligation upon States needs to be clearly defined rather than merely discretionary, with consequences when those obligations are not fulfilled.

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