by Dr. Mariagiulia Giuffré, Legal Scholar
Throughout history, people have always migrated from one place to another. Ever since the earliest humans began to spread from Africa thousands of years ago, people have been on the move, driven by climate, food availability, and other environmental factors [1]. Today about three percent of the world’s population live outside of their country of origin due to famine, climate change, persecution, security, demography, poverty and human rights abuses. Within this broadly mixed category of people on the move, refugees fleeing persecution and gross human rights violations in their home country represent the most vulnerable group, and are often unable to obtain personal identification and travel documents. As uninvited aliens, refugees are often perceived as a menace to the peace and internal security of the host State while also having no community and no linkage with their home country. As such, they are treated as outsiders whose claims must first be carefully assessed in order to decide whether they are legitimate and worthy of assistance. States’ endeavours to impose ever more robust barriers against those who seek to enter their national territories continue to accelerate and have therefore led to a ‘tension between generosity towards those at home and wariness of those from abroad’ [2].
