Asylum
and International Crimes
Asylum
is an institution that provides for the protection of individuals whose
life or liberty is threatened or endangered by acts of persecution or
violence stemming from the acts or omissions of a State.
One form, political asylum, has been especially well-developed in
Latin America. States have accepted that there are limits to asylum, based
on several sources of international law, including that asylum cannot be
granted to persons with respect to whom there are serious indicia that
they may have committed international crimes, such as crimes against
humanity (which include the forced disappearance of persons, torture, and
summary executions), war crimes, and crimes against peace. According
to article 1(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights, the States
have an obligation to prevent, investigate, and punish any violation of
the rights recognized therein. The
IACHR has stated previously that the evolution of the standards in public
international law has consolidated the notion of universal jurisdiction,
whereby any State has the authority to “prosecute and sanction
individuals responsible for such international crimes, even those
committed outside of a State’s territorial jurisdiction, or which do not
relate to the nationality of the accused or of the victims, inasmuch as
such crimes affect all of humanity and are in conflict with public order
in the world community.”[1]
The Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture and the
Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons expressly
provide that a State party should take the measures necessary to establish
its jurisdiction over the crimes provided for in those instruments when
the alleged offender is within its jurisdiction and it does not extradite
him/her. Based
on the foregoing considerations, the Inter-American Commission should note
that the institution of asylum is totally subverted by granting such
protection to persons who leave their country to elude a determination of
their liability as the material or intellectual author of international
crimes. The institution of
asylum presupposes that the person seeking protection is persecuted in his
or her state of origin, and is not supported by it in applying for asylum. In
view of the foregoing considerations, the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, in the exercise of the power conferred on it by Article
41(b) of the American Convention, hereby recommends to the Member States
of the OAS that they refrain from granting asylum to any person alleged to
be the material or intellectual author of international crimes. Approved
by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at its 108º regular
sessions, [ Table of Contents | Previous | Next ] [1]
IACHR, Recommendations on Universal Jurisdiction and the International
Criminal Court, Annual Report 1998, Ch. VII. |