85) Conditions for admissibility of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights.

The admissibility of individual complaints to the European Court for Human Rights is linked to a series of criteria defined in articles 34 and 35 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Many complaints are rejected because they are inaccurately worded and therefore it cannot be clearly followed whether all the conditions for admission are fulfilled.

• Subsidiarity: National legal action has to be exploited fully first. In Switzerland, this is only the case after a verdict by the Federal Supreme Court.

• Deadline: The complaint has to be lodged within 6 months of the judgement of the court of final appeal of the respective country. Delayed complaints will be dismissed.

• Form and content of the complaint: The complaint has to be filed in written and not anonymously, fax and email are also allowed. The facts and circumstances are to be presented in concise form, together with an explanation as to how and what extent ECHR rights were infringed. The complaint can be written in any official language of the Council of Europe. At a later stage, the proceedings will be held in French or English and there is an obligation to be represented in court.

• Legal consequences: If the European Court for Human Rights finds an infringement, it accepts the complaint and leaves it to the country to decide on how it is going to make up for the infringement (restitutio in integrum). Should this not be possible, the European Court for Human Rights can also decide on pecuniary reparation which, in general, usually falls substantially short of the expectations of the plaintiff. In Switzerland, a verdict by the Federal Supreme Court can be revised under the provisions of Art. 122 BGG (Federal Law on the Federal Supreme Court, in German)

86) The concept and the legal status of refugee. The United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951

The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees has adopted the following definition of a refugee (in Article 1.A.2):

Any 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 to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country".

The concept of a refugee was expanded by the Convention's 1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in Africa and Latin America to include persons who had fled war or other violence in their home country. European Union's minimum standards definition of refugee, underlined by Art. 2 (c) of Directive No. 2004/83/EC, essentially reproduces the narrow definition of refugee offered by the UN 1951 Convention; nevertheless, by virtue of articles 2 (e) and 15 of the same Directive, persons who have fled a war-caused generalized violence are, at certain conditions, elegible for a complementary form of protection, called subsidiary protection. The same form of protection is foreseen for people who, without being refugees, are nevertheless exposed, if returned to their countries of origin, to death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatments.

The term refugee is often used to include displaced persons who may fall outside the legal definition in the Convention,^[5] either because they have left their home countries because of war and not because of a fear of persecution, or because they have been forced to migrate within their home countries.^[6] The Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1969. Accepted the definition of the 1951 Refugee Convention and expanded it to include people who left their countries of origin not only because of persecution but also due to acts of external aggression, occupation, domination by foreign powers or serious disturbances of public order.^[6]

Refugees were defined as a legal group in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe following World War II. The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which counted 8,400,000 refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006. This was the lowest number since 1980.^[7] The major exception is the 4,600,000 Palestinian refugees under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).^[8] In June 2011 the UNHCR estimated the number of refugees to 15.1 million.^[9] The majority of refugees who leave their country seek asylum in countries neighboring their country of nationality. The "durable solutions" to refugee populations, as defined by UNHCR and governments, are: voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration into the country of asylum; and resettlement to a third country.