2010 tilj leveraging asylum

503 Leveraging Asylum JAMES C. HATHAWAY* SUMMARY I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................503 II. THE FIRST CLAIM: THE DUTY OF N ON -REFOULEMENT BINDS ALL STATES ............................................................................................................. ....507 III. THE SECOND CLAIM: NON-REFUGEES ARE ENTITLED TO REFUGEE RIGHTS ........................................................................................................... ......528 IV. CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................535 I. INTRODUCTION Until the mid-1980s, only refugees could invoke international law to resist removal to a dangerous country of origin. The evolution in international law since that time has been both fast-paced and profound. This is most clearly true under European human rights law. No less an authority than the House of Lords has declared that the right of non-return extends not only to refugees, but to any person at risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, andat least where the risk is clear and extremeapplies also where there is a threat to: life; freedom from slavery; liberty and security of person; protection against ex post facto criminality; privacy and family life; or freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. 1 But the dramatic expansion of protection is not limited to Europe. While less easily enforced than the rules of the European safety net, 2 the combination at the * Dean of the Melbourne Law School and William Hearn Professor of Law, University of Melbourne. The research assistance of Anne Kallies, as well as the thoughtful comments of Michelle Foster, Martin Jones, Paul McDonough, Jason Pobjoy and Michael Timmins on an earlier draft are acknowledged with appreciation. This analysis was initially presented at the Auckland University Faculty of Law ‘Human Rights at the Frontier’ Conference, Sept. 12, 2008. The author thanks the New Zealand Legal Research Foundation and University of Auckland Law Faculty for the invitation to participate in this conference. 1. R. (Ullah) v. Special Ad judicator, Do v. Immigration Appeal Tribunal, [2004] UKHL 26, [2004] 2 A.C. 323 (H.L.) (appeal taken from Eng. Ct. App.) (U.K.). See generally NUALA MOLE, ASYLUM AND THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS (4th ed. 2007) (1984) (surveying asylum-related case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and developments in European asylum law); THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS 433–40 (Pieter Van Dijk et al. eds., Intersentia 2006) (1978) (discussing non-return in cases where there would be risks for the returned individual in his or her country of origin). 2. See generally THE FUTURE OF UN HUMAN RIGHTS TREATY MONITORING (Philip Alston & James

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