Condensed Results Report of PROTECT's Governance and Historical Research

The international refugee protection system comprises multiple protection tools, from preventive measures (e.g., development aid, conflict resolution, diplomacy, military intervention, support to refugee-protecting states) to direct measures (e.g., resettlement, relocation, temporary protection, protection in safe zones, and individual asylum). Amongst these, individual asylum is the most clearly defined instrument in the UN’s 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. National refugee determination (RSD) systems are primarily about the individual asylum instrument of the international protection regime. RSD systems are meant to function as holistic sets of institutions, actors, and procedures assembled to examine asylum applications and grant international protection to those who need it. They are intended to give fair treatment to asylum claimants by clearly distinguishing between those who are eligible for international protection and those who are not. Despite this common purpose, the national RSDs are legally, institutionally, and procedurally organized in various ways.1 Although international RSD harmonization has been going on since the 1990s, especially in the EU member states,2 there are still significant country-wise differences in how the RSDs are organized.