International protection of refugees. An extension of the concept from the Americas

Abstract

The international protection of refugees is instituted by the legal regime established by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol. At the regional level, while Africa developed a protection instrument for those fleeing situational events in their country of origin in 1969, the Americas had regional asylum instruments oriented towards certain specific profiles that were not adequate to protect
thousands of people forcibly displaced by the internal conflicts that began in Central America in the early 1980s. This situation highlighted the need for an American regional instrument of protection for those individuals whom the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol could not include in the definition of the term refugee. Thus, the States adopted a new definition incorporating elements of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, known as the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees. Almost 40 years later, fourteen countries in the Americas have incorporated it into their national asylum frameworks, allowing them to provide protection to thousands of people forced to flee their countries.