SLP 10 (2016)

CONCLUSION Non-refoulement principle. A short phrase that has the power to save lives. Its importance has grown in the last couple of months for theMember States of the European Union, and also for the Czech Republic, following the mass influx of persons that began in the year 2015, at the time when we were finishing this publication. Therefore, it is useful to do a short reflection of the current situation from the point of view of this phenomenon and its application for the states’ maritime borders. While researching the principle we went back to its definition in refugee law, thus to the roots of the legal regulations. The role of non-refoulement is crucial- it is the only obligation that is imposed upon states by universal refugee law. The Convention on the Status of Refugees imposes upon states a duty not to return a refugee to the borders of a territory where his or her life or freedom would be endangered for reasons stated in the definition of the term ‘refugee’. Other obligations are dependent on situations when states let a person stay on their territory either voluntarily or because they cannot return the person to a different state. In these scenarios, the refugee is entitled to the benefits stemming from the Convention such as the possibility to enter the labor market, access to courts, access of children to schools, and the possibility to conduct business. The Convention itself does not oblige the states to grant refugee status. Therefore, the refugee after leaving his or her home country does not know whether and where he or she will receive protection. That is in fact in the hands of the states. Even though it is obvious from the Preamble of the Convention that it would be appropriate for states to share their burden voluntarily which otherwise lies on the shoulders only of those states that neighbor the home countries of the refugees, it was not embodied into any normative wording. In history the states succeeded in adequately responding to the mass influx of persons from Hungary in the year 1956 when around 200 000 refugees came to Austria over a couple of weeks. Almost 100 000 of them were transferred to other countries over the following couple weeks. Such a positive approach has not however been common in recent decades. Refugees usually stay in the countries of their region either because they want to or because there is no chance to go somewhere else. On the other hand, some of them try to leave to different countries and especially the more economically developed countries look for ways to prevent their arrival. Therefore, the system of the protection of refugees based on the principle of non- refoulement is not only unjust towards states but it is also not possible to accept it as favorable to refugees. The law makes it practically possible for states to leave the weight of the big numbers of persons on the states that are bordering countries to the ones that the refugees come from. If there is only one obligation to not return the refugees back to danger, there is no doubt that many states will use this literally when needed. The European legislation explicitly allows for this approach in its provisions on the safe third countries or the safe countries of origin, and even though there are

70