Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T10:09:21.452Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Judicial Constructions of Risk on Return to Situations of Contemporary Armed Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2023

Christel Querton
Affiliation:
University of the West of England, Bristol
Get access

Summary

Chapter 4 explores how appellate authorities in the EU understand and approach situations of armed conflict. This chapter claims that appellate authorities approach situations of armed conflict predominantly through the perspective of conventional warfare and a notion of territoriality. Such a perspective fails to acknowledge that one of the main strategies of fighting parties is to exercise political control over territory by forcibly displacing and terrorising populations through highly visible forms of human rights violations. The findings bring to the fore the misconceptions regarding the application of the Refugee Convention to persons fleeing armed conflicts, namely a perceived dichotomy between a risk of individual persecution and a risk arising from widespread violence. The research challenges appellate authorities’ conflation of asymmetrical warfare with lower levels of violence and less serious forms of violence contrary to knowledge in the field of feminist and security studies indicating that non-conventional armed conflicts are in fact characterised by armed groups’ relative control over the exercise of strategic, and thus political, violence. The chapter concludes that the existence of two distinct legal statuses in the EU based on reasons for flight operates as an obstacle to the development of international refugee law.

Type
Chapter
Information
Conflict Refugees
European Union Law and Practice
, pp. 71 - 82
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×