Are Safety Zones a Threat to the Institution of Asylum?

Safe zones emerged as a new form of humanitarian space during the 1990s. Safe zones take various forms; however, they most often assume the shape of a temporal camp in a specified geographical area within the borders of the refugee-producing state. Nevertheless, safe zones are not protected from criticism. The increasingly common practice of States rejecting asylum claims based on the existence of safe zones is in conflict with the notion of asylum as a tool for the international protection of refugees, a human right enshrined in Article 14(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To establish the risks associated with safety zones vis-à-vis refugees, attention will be drawn to the scale of permissibility in refugee law in its recognition of safety zones as a ground to restrict access to asylum. Particular attention will be drawn to the notion of Internal Protection Alternatives (IPA), as if the applicant is possibly safely relocating within his or her country of origin, they will not be accorded refugee status. To establish whether safe zones can represent a pragmatic complementary policy to international protection or a threat to the institution of asylum, this chapter will critically assess the performance of three safety zones: Iraq (1991), Bosnia and, more specifically, Srebrenica (1995) and Syria (2020)