This article takes as its starting point the UK's ‘Asylum Policy Instruction’ (API) on credibility. APIs are statements of the government's asylum policy, and are followed by asylum ‘case owners’ and other decision makers. Although well-intentioned, the API runs the risk of confusing credibility and proof. In order to explore the issues of credibility and proof, this article analyses the API itself, the UK's primary legislation, Immigration Rules, and case law, EU law, and guidance provided by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR).

By exploring the analytical approaches applied by the Courts in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, this article attempts to demonstrate the ways in which stateless persons have been excluded from effective international human rights protection. Specifically, the article argues that states have not considered their own human rights obligations when making individual refugee status decisions. Further, it observes that, in some cases, decision makers have tended to refer to international compendia on international refugee law and international human rights law rather than to reflect directly on the law itself. This in turn has encouraged an increasingly restrictive approach to refugee determination.

In its conclusion, this article offers suggestions for reintegrating the foundations of international human rights law into claim determinations for stateless persons. It suggests that a return to first principles and foundational concepts will realign the implementation of international refugee law with its intended purpose: the protection of the world's most vulnerable people.

This paper describes and evaluates comparatively the most important legal policy dilemmas (use of the domestic courts, types of claims addressed and remedies provided) involved in the process and examines how they were addressed by the international administration. In this sense, the paper evaluates the design of the first mass claims mechanism, the Housing and Property Directorate, an internationally run body competent for conflict related residential property claims, and the impact of this on the implementation of its mandate. The article then analyzes the legal policy dilemmas and the internal legislative turmoil that took place within the United Nations Mission in Kosovo during the transformation of the Housing and Property Directorate into the Kosovo Property Agency, a hybrid international/domestic body competent for the resolution of private agricultural and commercial property claims linked to the conflict.

The authors aim to identify and understand lessons that may be used when designing future post-conflict property restitution mechanisms to ensure both fairness and efficiency. They argue that a better pre-design situation analysis, preferably at the ‘micro’ level, is needed to address the needs of the victims. The authors advocate for more comprehensive property rights protection regimes, which do not centre on the ‘return home’ policy and that take into account the interests of informal dwellers. They consider that more effective decision making is necessary at the policy level. A clearer understanding of the nature of mass claims mechanisms and of the need for procedural exclusion of the domestic judiciary in certain cases will help prevent future delays in justice and benefit the victims.

One must assume that at least some of the people on board intercepted vessels are persons in need of international protection. However, some European governments have argued that the principle of non-refoulement does not apply exterritorially. This article will challenge this approach. First, it argues that the principle of non-refoulement, as laid down in the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the European Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties relating to refugee and immigration law does apply beyond the territory of the signatory states. Secondly, it argues why non-refoulement, as a principle of refugee and fundamental rights legislation within European primary and secondary law, does apply beyond the territory of the contracting states. Thirdly, regarding the treatment of protection seekers and migrants at sea, it examines the obligations of border guard authorities to act under maritime, human rights and refugee law and when there is a legal failure to act. Finally, the article examines whether EU secondary law, as well as Border Control Practice, are consistent with these obligations.