Foreword

• Author: David Cantor
• Profession: Professor
• Pages: 17-19

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Foreword

   

Who deserves protection? One of the main functions of refugee law is

to provide a set of criteria for distinguishing non-nationals who merit

international protection from those who do not. That assessment is

rooted in a fear of extreme discrimination in the refugee’s own country

for which national protection is not forthcoming. This enquiry, then,

is fundamental to the rationale of refugee law. But refugee law also

demands an answer to a second, and less comfortable, question: who,

regardless of such fear, does not deserve international protection? It is

here where considerations of individual character and criminality enter

the ambit of refugee law. This is the vexed matter to which Dr. Joseph

Rikhof turns his considerable powers of legal scholarship in the mono-

graph Exclusion and Refoulement, f‌irst published in  as The

Criminal Refugee: The Treatment of Asylum Seekers with a Criminal

Background in International and Domestic Law and appearing here in

its second edition.

Exclusion and Refoulement gifts the reader with a clear and per-

ceptive understanding of how key elements of this f‌ield of law deal

with actual or suspected criminality by non-nationals who might other-

wise qualify for international protection. That this is an ongoing prac-

tical concern in many countries, and not merely a matter for abstract

legal discussion, is evidenced by major developments in the caselaw

of leading jurisdictions since the f‌irst edition of this volume was pub-

lished ten years ago. It is seen too in the surge of important new legal

scholarship on this topic, including Terrorism and Exclusion from

Refugee Status in the UK by Dr. Sarah Singer, Exclusion Clauses of