What is the difference between international and humanitarian protection?

[Badraneforum]

These are the differences between international and humanitarian protection:

International protection include refugee status and subsidiary protection. Who is a “refugee”? This status is determined by the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention. Thus, the multilateral treaty defines who is a refugee and at the same time sets out rights for those individuals whom are granted asylum. Moreover, it defines responsibilities for nation states which grant asylum. In the Article 1 of the Convention, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, a refugee is defined as:

"A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..”

The Convention builds on Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes the right of individuals to seek asylum from persecution in their home countries. A refugee may enjoy rights and benefits in one particular nation state in addition to those provided in the Convention. The Refugee Status Determination is an essential legal or administrative process in which governments or UNHCR determine whether an individual seeking international protection is considered a refugee under international, regional or national law. States have the primary responsibility in this process, but UNHCR may do so where states are unable or unwilling.

In the Italian context the right to asylum is one of the fundamental human rights recognized by the Constitution. Article 10, third paragraph, of the Constitution states, in fact, that the foreign citizen to whom is prevented any form of democratic liberties in his/her own country, guaranteed by the Italian Constitution, has the right to asylum in Italy, under the conditions established by the Law. However, it is not enough that the country of origin is suppressing fundamental freedoms, but the individual applicant must have suffered, or have a well-founded fear to suffer, specific acts of persecution. These acts are sufficient to represent serious violation of fundamental human rights in the form of:

      Acts of physical or physiological violence 

      Legislative, administrative, judicial or police discriminatory measures

·        Discriminatory judicial actions or criminal sanction
 Denial access to legal protection means
 Judicial action or fines as consequences of the refusal to serve the army
 Acts against sexual orientation

    Furthermore, subsidiary protection is an international protection for the third country nationals or stateless who is seeking asylum but do not have the necessary requirements to be recognized the refugee status. However, there are justified motives to believe that they would face a real risk of suffering serious harm if they return to the country of origin. Under the “serious harm” is risk of: death penalty or execution, torture or inhuman and degrading treatment, serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life.

In those cases when the international protection (refugee status and subsidiary protection) is not recognized, but is assumed that there might exist serious motives with humanitarian character, the Territorial Commissions can give the permission to be issued a stay permit based on the acknowledged humanitarian protection status. The Territorial Commissions for the recognition of the international protection are the Italian authorities competent to examine the asylum application and to take first instance decisions.

In the first quarter of 2016 were 16,080 asylum applications made in Italy. Only in the month of January for the asylum have applied 7,505 people, out of what 190 have recognition of refugee status, subsidiary protection to 689, 1,352 humanitarian protection, the rest were rejected. The Established Attorney Badrane as expert in the immigration law says:

“In the field of the immigration law in Italy, we are facing a lot of challenges and fighting every day to push the boundaries. It is inevitable change of attitude towards those defined as “immigrants” inside of the political and juridical system and within the society”.

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