International Refugee Law and European Union

According to International Refugee Law a refugee is defined as a person who owing to 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. Refugees have become a problem in Europe since First World War and Second World War. Accordingly, Geneva Conventions were signed in 1951, which have a great importance in terms of International refugee law,in order to tackle this problem, ensure security of millions of people with refugee status and grant them necessary rights by the countries. With these conventions, the question of how to define refugee's concept came to the fore. The regulations regarding Refugee law and Refugee definition weren't only limited to the Geneva Conventions. In 1967, a new protocol was signed in addition to these Conventions. Thanks to that signed protocol, definition of refugees began to be used in a broad sense. During this period, migration direction was mostly done towards Europe. For that reason, European countries have tried to take necessary measures to settle this matter. These works to resolve the migration problem were mostly carried out before EU. Furthermore, European Union has given place to refugee's notion and matters concerning refugees in numerous EU conventions. If we have a glance to all these developments, we can see that International Refugee Law has gained importance with these conventions. In the present study, the matters briefly mentioned above and International Refugee Law will be handled under EU title. Keywords: Geneva Conventions, 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Refugees, EuropeanUnion