The Contested Claims of Convention Refugees: Grotius to the Rescue

Abstract The 1951 UN Refugee Convention protects a very small set of individuals, namely those who are persecuted by state authorities due to their race, religion or membership of a particular social group. Critics charge that this definition is unduly narrow. Arguments inspired by Grotius on the one hand help explain the special claims of such Convention refugees, and hence fill a gap in recent “state system legitimacy” defenses of the Refugee Convention. The Convention compensates for a normative “construction flaw” of the system of sovereign nation states. Other inhabitants of the Earth and their governments contribute to injury to Convention refugees by leaving them no state free place to go. States’ immunity also allows them to perpetrate such particularly wicked ab-uses of state power, in violation of the rule of law. On the other hand, Grotius’s arguments also help us justify a broader interpretation of which “particular social groups” to include among the Convention refugees, beyond those whose international human rights are violated.