}
CONFIDENTIAL
2(1) UNHCR's MANDATE (including non-mandate refugees)
Home Office Contrību stizen
LINE TO TAKE
The United Kingdom appreciates the High Commissioner's difficulty in
dealing with protection matters in those States which are not parties
to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol. It is in these circumstances,
more than any other, that the Mandate can be invoked to assure asylum-
seekers of, at the least, the protection of non-refoulement and, therefore,
temporary asylum. The efforts of the High Commissioner's Office are,
accordingly to be supported. What we would not, however, endorse would
be any extended interpretation of the Mandate to be applied to countries
party to the Convention. There are at present many cases which, while
falling short of the criteria in Article 1 of the Convention, are
considered as humanitarian or exceptional grounds. These lie in the
States' discretion and any move to bring them into the Mandate would
be seen as an erosion of that domestic discretion.
BACKGROUND
There is an increasing frequency of instances where receiving States asylum procedures, mostly in the developed world and including the
United Kingdom, are being overloaded with national groups from countries
where either the standard of living is appreciably lower than that
provided by our social benefits system or where civil unrest makes life
inconvenient (sometimes dangerous); sometimes there is a combination
of both factors, such people do not qualify generally as refugees under
the Convention and States' authorities consider that rejection of the
frontier and return to the country of origin is appropriate.
UNHCR,
both centrally and locally, however take the view that return to these
conditions is tantamount to refoulement. The office has sought to
bring pressure on governments, arguing the High Commissioner's Mandate to adopt lines of tolerant action which are outside their Conventional
obligations but within their sovereignity. Not unnaturally, in the present circumstances in Western Europe, States would be most unhappy
to contemplate any extension of the Mandate in this way.
CONFIDENTIAL