Right of asylum

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Asylum seekers by country of origin.
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Sanctuary ring on a door of Notre-Dame de Paris (France).
Medieval boundary marker at St. Georgenberg, Tyrol.

The right of asylum (sometimes called right of political asylum, from the ancient Greek word ἄσυλον[1][2]) is an ancient juridical concept, under which a person persecuted by their own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries (as in medieval times). This right was already recognized by the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Hebrews, from where it was adopted into Western tradition; Descartes went to the Netherlands, Voltaire to England, Hobbes to France, and each state offered protection to persecuted foreigners.

The Egyptians, Greeks, and Hebrews recognized a religious "right of asylum," protecting criminals (or those accused of crime) from legal action to some extent.[3][4] This principle was later adopted by the established Christian church, and various rules developed to qualify for protection and just how much protection it was.[5]


Medieval England

In England, King Æthelberht of Kent made the first laws regulating sanctuary in about 600 AD, though Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136) says that the legendary pre-Saxon king Dunvallo Molmutius (4th/5th century BC) enacted sanctuary laws in the Molmutine Laws as recorded by Gildas (c. 500–570).[6] In the laws of king Ethelred, the term grith is used. By the Norman era after 1066, there had evolved two kinds of sanctuary: all churches had the lower-level kind (sanctuary within the church proper), but only churches licensed by the king had a broader version (sanctuary in a zone surrounding the church). There were at least twenty-two churches with charters for a broader kind of sanctuary, including Battle Abbey, Beverley (see image, right), Colchester, Durham, Hexham, Norwich, Ripon, Wells, Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and York Minster.

Sometimes the criminal had to get to the chapel itself to be protected, and might have to ring a certain bell there, or hold a certain ring or door-knocker, or sit on a certain chair ("frith-stool"), and some of these items survive at various churches. In other places, there was an area around the church or abbey, sometimes extending as much as a mile and a half, and there would be stone "sanctuary crosses" marking the boundary of the area; some of those still exist as well. Thus it could become a race between the felon and medieval law officers to the nearest sanctuary boundary, and could make the serving of justice upon the fleet of foot a difficult proposition.







Modern political asylum



Since the 1990s, victims of sexual persecution (which may include domestic violence, or systematic oppression of a gender or sexual minority) have come to be accepted in some countries as a legitimate category for asylum claims, when claimants can prove that the state is unable or unwilling to provide protection.

Right of asylum by country of refuge

The Dutch government grants asylum to a couple of hundred elderly from Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states. Since the end of World War II the people stayed in camps in Austria and West Germany. (Newsreel ((Dutch))

European Union

Asylum in European Union Member States formed over a half-century by application of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 on the Status of Refugees. Common policies appeared in the 1990s in connection with the Schengen Agreement (which suppressed internal borders) so that asylum seekers unsuccessful in one Member State would not reapply in another. The common policy began with the Dublin Convention in 1990. It continued with the implementation of Eurodac and the Dublin Regulation in 2003, and the October 2009 adoption of two proposals by the European Commission.[9]


France was the first country to recognize the constitutional right to asylum, this being enshrined in article 120 of the Constitution of 1793.[10] The modern French right of asylum is recognized by the 1958 Constitution, vis-à-vis the paragraph 4 of the preamble to the Constitution of 1946, to which the Preamble of the 1958 Constitution directly refers. The Constitution of 1946 incorporated of parts of the 1793 constitution which had guaranteed the right of asylum to "anyone persecuted because of his action for freedom" who are unable to seek protection in their home countries.

In addition to the constitutional right to asylum, the modern French right to asylum (droit d'asile) is enshrined on a legal and regulatory basis in the Code de l'Entree et du Sejour des Etrangers et du Droit d'Asile[11] (CESEDA).

France also adheres to international agreements which provide for application modalities for the right of asylum, such as the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (ratified in 1952), the additional 1967 protocol; articles K1 and K2 of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty as well as the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which defined EU immigration policy. Finally, the right of asylum is defined by article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Some of the criteria for which an asylum application can be rejected include: i) Passage via “safe" third country, ii) Safe Country of Origin (An asylum seeker can be a prior refused asylum if the he or she is a national of a country considered to be "safe" by the French asylum authority OFPRA),[12] iii) Safety Threat (serious threat to the public order), or iv) Fraudulent Application (abuse of the asylum procedure for other reasons).

The December 10, 2003, law limited political asylum through two main restrictions:

While restricted, the right of political asylum has been conserved in France amid various anti-immigration laws. Some people claim that, apart from the purely judicial path, the bureaucratic process is used to slow down and ultimately reject what might be considered as valid requests. According to Le Figaro, France granted 7,000 people the status of political refugee in 2006, out of a total of 35,000 requests; in 2005, the OFPRA in charge of examining the legitimacy of such requests granted less than 10,000 from a total of 50,000 requests.[15]

Numerous exiles from South American dictatorships, particularly from Augusto Pinochet's Chile and the Dirty War in Argentina, were received in the 1970s-80s. Since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, tens of homeless Afghan asylum seekers have been sleeping in a park in Paris near the Gare de l'Est train station.[16] Although their demands haven't been yet accepted, their presence has been tolerated. However, since the end of 2005, NGOs have been noting that the police separate Afghans from other migrants during raids, and expel via charters those who have just arrived at Gare de l'Est by train and haven't had time to demand asylum (a May 30, 2005, decree requires them to pay for a translator to help with official formalities).[17]

United Kingdom
Further information: Asylum and Immigration Tribunal

In the 19th century, the United Kingdom accorded political asylum to various persecuted people, among whom were many members of the socialist movement (including Karl Marx). With the 1845 attempted bombing of the Greenwich Royal Observatory[citation needed] and the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street in the context of the propaganda of the deed (anarchist) actions, political asylum was restricted.

United States


As noted in the article specifically about asylum and refugees in the United States, since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. During much of the 1990s, the United States accepted over 100,000 refugees per year, though this figure has recently decreased to around 50,000 per year in the first decade of the 21st century, due to greater security concerns. As for asylum seekers, the latest statistics show that 86,400 persons sought sanctuary in the United States in 2001.[18] Before the September 11 attacks individual asylum applicants were evaluated in private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).

Despite this, concerns have been raised with the U.S. asylum and refugee determination processes. A recent empirical analysis by three legal scholars described the U.S. asylum process as a game of refugee roulette; that is to say that the outcome of asylum determinations depends in large part on the personality of the particular adjudicator to whom an application is randomly assigned, rather than on the merits of the case. The very low numbers of Iraqi refugees accepted between 2003 and 2007 exemplifies concerns about the United States' refugee processes. The Foreign Policy Association reported that "Perhaps the most perplexing component of the Iraq refugee crisis... has been the inability for the U.S. to absorb more Iraqis following the 2003 invasion of the country. To date, the U.S. has granted less than 800 Iraqis refugee status, just 133 in 2007. By contrast, the U.S. granted asylum to more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War." [19]

The 2000 documentary film Well-Founded Fear, from filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini marked the first time[citation needed] that a film crew was privy to the (above mentioned) private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), where individual asylum officers ponder the often life-or-death fate of the majority of immigrants seeking asylum. It provided the first high-profile,[according to whom?] behind-the-scenes[clarification needed] look at the process for seeking asylum in the United States.[citation needed] The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival, documentary competition and was broadcast in June, 2000 on PBS as part of POV.

Between 2004 and 2007, nearly 4,000 Venezuelans claimed political asylum in the United States and almost 50% of them were granted. In contrast, in 1996, only 328 Venezuelans claimed asylum, and a mere 20% of them were granted.[20]

According to USA Today, the number of asylums being granted to Venezuelan claimants has risen from 393 in 2009 to 969 in 2012.[21] Other references agree with the high number of political asylum claimants from Venezuela, confirming that between 2000 and 2010, the United States have granted them with 4,500 political asylums.[22]

See also


  1. "Asylum - Definition". Merriam-Webster Dictionary - Merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2012-08-17. 
  2. "asylum (n.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. 
  3. Numbers 35:25
  4. Joshua 20
  6. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae 2, 17
  7. Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, pp. 35–36
  8. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 33 (1)
  9. A single asylum procedure and equitable to establish a uniform status valid throughout the European Union: the final building blocks of international protection are asked, Brussels, October 21, 2009 (press release Europa.eu)
  10. Prof. Vincent Chetail (2008-09-16). "Helène Lambert, Francesco Messineo, and Paul Tiedemann, COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES OF CONSTITUTIONAL ASYLUM IN FRANCE, ITALY, AND GERMANY: REQUIESCAT IN PACE?, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3" (PDF). Rsq.oxfordjournals.org. Retrieved 2013-07-10. 
  11. "Code de l'entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d'asile." (in français). Legifrance. Retrieved 2013-07-10. 
  12. "Authority delegated to OFPRA by art. L. 722-1 of Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile , J.O., 4 December 2009". Legifrance.gouv.fr. 
  13. "ofpra.gouv.fr". 
  16. Schuster, Liza (Winter 2010). "The park near the Gare de l'Est: ‘Just waiting to go, to move on'" (PDF). Translocations: Migration and Social Change. 6 (2). Retrieved 29 December 2012. 
  17. "PAJOL | Expulsion collective des afghans : non à l'arbitraire et à l'illégalité !". Pajol.eu.org. Retrieved 2012-08-17. 
  18. "Asylum Seekers (most recent) by country". Nationmaster.com. Retrieved 2012-08-17. 
  20. http://www.discipleshomemissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/DW-WWW-2009-RIMStudy.pdf
  21. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/07/venezuelan-middle-class-miami/6176793/
  22. http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/06/24/thousands-venezuelans-have-gotten-political-asylum-in-us/

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