I. Premises:
When to be a refugee?
Unfamiliar may it sound, the question is of great importance from a practical perspective. The problem occurs as a result of the relationship between the international statute for refugees and the "interpretive" statute of the United Nations Refugee Agency or local laws. While conventions relating to refugees include clear definitions of individuals who may be classified as refugees, such conventions do not include mechanisms for implementation. Therefore, the task of determining those falling under the definition is left to interpretations and policies of the Agency or the local law in the country to which refugees were driven. Most often, some individual may be classified as "asylum seeker", until the Refugee Agency or the competent national authorities decide that he falls under the definition.
In fact, asylum seekers are not beneficiaries of the protection forms specified in the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Further, many countries do not agree to grant refuge. Instead, they grant permission of residency for humanitarian reasons, so that a refugee can stay in the country of asylum in a legal way for some period. However, he is not given the right to avail himself of the guarantees accredited by the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Also, national measures of determining the status of refugees are often so prolonged that they take several years until the status of a asylum seeker is determined. (Essence and Structure of the Circle of Rights – Unit No. 7 – p. 146/study submitted by the University of Minnesota – Source: University's Web site).
Measures can even be described as unreasonably difficult. With measures like these, the individuals who fall under the definition of refugee are unable to obtain rights approved by the international community. It should, whoever, be taken into consideration that the international Convention for Refugees deems an individual as refugee if and as long as he fulfills the definition mentioned in the related Convention for Refugees.
Rule of International Juristic Personality:
States are no longer the only international juristic personality. International organizations are recognized to be having juristic personality as they have the two factors for such a personality, namely competence of enjoying international rights and holding international duties, and the ability to establish international juristic rules, within the scope of its functions.
That is what the International Court of Justice stated in its advisory opinion issued on 11 April 1949 regarding the Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations.
Individuals, however, do not have the ability to establish the rules of the international law, and they are not addressed by those rules except through their states – although in very limited cases, they are addressed directly by some of such rules. So, they do not have the components of having an international juristic personality. That is the most preponderant opinion.
(General International Law – 2nd edition – Abd Al-Mughny Mahmoud, PhD – p:208 – Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabia Publications).
Conclusion:
We notice here that the complication cannot be dealt with isolated from interpretation and policies of the Refugee Agency implemented through its regional offices, as well as interpretations given by the United Nations Refugee Agency to the international Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It has all freedom in determining who fall under the definition mentioned in the Convention. Refugees, however, do not have the criterion of international juristic personality, and therefore they cannot defend their rights or prosecute the Agency for damages. Palestinian refugees then have no way to defend their rights which are violated and ignored in a systematic, designed way.