In Chapter 6, I examine protection from refuge claims made by Palestinian refugees. Some Palestinian refugees leave an UNRWA area of operation (Jordon, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza strip, East Jerusalem or the West Bank) and seek refugee protection elsewhere. In making these journeys, they confront article 1D of the Refugee Convention, which provides that Palestinian refugees are excluded from protection under the Refugee Convention unless their UN protection or assistance has ceased for any reason. When decision-makers reflect on the nature of Palestinian refugeehood and expand their juridical borders, they come close to setting a broad scope of refuge for Palestinian refugees and characterising refuge as a right, duty and act of international solidarity. However, most decision-makers determine these claims in a way that truncates the scope of refuge, positions refuge not as a right but as an act of benevolence and entrenches article 1D as a containment mechanism. This inhibits Palestinian refugees’ ability to find a place of refuge outside the UNRWA region unless their circumstances are deemed exceptional in some way. A feminist analysis of the case law indicates that the approach to exceptionality in article 1D jurisprudence creates additional barriers for female Palestinian refugees.

I start with reference to refugee journeys and how they are rarely linear but are instead ‘fragmented’ because of poor conditions in many places of ostensible refuge and states’ containment mechanisms. I highlight that there has been little consideration of the role litigation plays in refugee journeys. This is despite refugees increasingly turning to courts to seek protection, not from persecution in their home country, but from a place of ‘refuge’. While there are myriad studies of how courts interpret refugee definitions, in this first global and comparative study of protection from refuge jurisprudence, I examine how judges approach the remedy: refuge. Using feminist approaches to international law,I also consider whether these judicial approaches assist or hinder refugees’ (or particular refugees’) journeys towards a safe haven with a particular focus on gender but also intersectional factors such as youth, disability, sexuality and parenthood. I argue that when protection from refuge claims first come before decision-making bodies, judges adopt rich and robust ideas of refuge. However, most of these victories have been ephemeral. Decision-makers reverse or dilute initial successes and adopt rudimentary understandings of refuge. This trajectory transforms these judgments from refugee protection to migration management decisions.

This chapter draws an outline how scholars from myriad disciplines (including law, anthropology, political science, history, geography, international relations, philosophy, psychology and economics), UN institutions and refugees approach and understand the notion of refuge. I also highlight the discrepancies between these ideas and the reality. I ask the gender question by exploring what women are seeking when they search for refuge as well as the nature of refuge sought by children and refugees with disabilities. I show that the concept of refuge is a robust one. There are different approaches to theorising refuge, but there is a shared understanding that it has restorative, regenerative and palliative functions that address refugees’ past, present and future. Refuge operates as a response to the particular dilemmas of those in need of protection and is variously expressed as a remedy, right, duty, process and status. It has a broad and flexible scope that responds to the specific needs of women, children and refugees with disabilities. The threshold for adequate refuge is a high one, encompassing much more than mere survival. However, many people who seek protection find themselves in places where the conditions may be comparable to or worse than the places they fled.