TNAG-1797-FCO40-2557-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-repatriation--including-Opera-1988 — Page 20

CHAPTER II

INCLUSION CLAUSES

A. Definitions

(1) Statutory Refugees

32. Article 1 A (1) of the 1951 Convention deals with statutory refugees, i.e. persons considered to be refugees under the provisions of international instruments preceding the Convention. This provision states that:

"For the purposes of the present Convention, the term ‘refugee' shall apply to any person who:

(1) Has been considered a refuges under the Arrangements of 12 May 1926 and 30 June 1928 or under the Conventions of 28 October 1933 and 10 February 1938, the Protocol of 14 September 1939 or the Constitution of the inter- national Refugee Organization;

Decisions of non-eligibility taken by the International Refugee Organization during the period of its activities shall not prevent the status of refugees being accorded to persons who fulfil the conditions of paragraph 2 of this section.” 33. The above enumeration is given in order to provide a link with the past and to ensure the continuity of international protection of refugees who became the concern of the international community at various earlier periods. As already indicated (para. 4 above), these instruments have by now lost much of their significance, and a discussion of them here would be of little practical value. However, a person who has been considered a refugee under the terms of any of these instruments is automatically a refugee under the 1951 Convention. Thus, a holder of a so-called "Nansen Passport" or a "Certificate of Eligibility" issued by the International Refugee Organization must be considered a refugee under the 1951 Con- vention unless one of the cessation clauses has become applicable to his case or he is excluded from the application of the Convention by one of the exclusion clauses. This also applies to a surviving child of a statutory refugee.

(2) General definition in the 1951 Convention

34. According to Article 1 A (2) of the 1951 Convention the term “refu- gee" shall apply to any person who:

"Nansen Passport": a certificate of identity for use as a travel document, issued to refugees under the provisions of pre-war instruments.

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