2 - The Legal Framework

Summary

Chapter 2 reviews the international and EU legal frameworks that apply to the international protection of persons fleeing contemporary armed conflicts from a gender perspective. The chapter explores the relationship between international law and armed conflicts, then turns to the interaction between international refugee law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The chapter emphasises the role of international human rights law in recognising the context of armed conflicts for the protection of human rights from a gender perspective. It then examines whether the Refugee Convention definition applies to persons fleeing armed conflicts in accordance with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) , but also more broadly whether international refugee law is able to fulfil its purpose of international protection in light of the changing characteristics of contemporary armed conflicts. The central claim of this chapter is that interpreting the Refugee Convention definition to ensure the effective protection of persons fleeing contemporary armed conflicts requires the incorporation of existing knowledge found in conflict and gender literature. This interpretative obligation is then discussed in the context of EU Member States (MS) acting within the EU legal order.