Asylum and Extradition – Asile et extradition

Persons who want to remain in a country
where they are not citizens rather than to return to their motherland or a
third country may seek asylum.  If
their request is rejected, they may be extradited to their home
country or to a third country.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition., defines asylum as:

 “Protection and immunity from extradition
granted by a government to a political refugee from another country.”

 It defines extradition as “Legal surrender of a fugitive to the jurisdiction of another state,
country, or government for trial.”

 Asylum is derived
from Latin, asylum, meaning
sanctuary, which came from the Greek word
asylon, meaning an inviolable place.  Extradition originated in the Latin tradition, meaning handing over, and
reached English through French. Claims of asylum are
usually made on the grounds of race, nationality, religion,
political opinions and membership and/or
participation in any particular social group
or social activities. The petitioner would argue that he or she is in danger,
if extradited, of being persecuted for belonging to one of those groups or
engaging in such activity.

The United States sometimes grants
asylum to persons belonging to a “particular social group” that may be
persecuted in their countries of origin. Such cases may involve, for example, a
member of the Baha’i faith from Iran, where the Baha’i sect is persecuted, or
to a gay person from a country where homosexuality is prohibited by law.

Two recent, American court cases  have brought attention to these two types of legal
proceedings. The first case involved the attempted extradition of French-Polish
film director, Roman Polanski, by the American government. Polanski was
arrested in Los Angeles in 1977 on charges of statutory rape of a 13-year old.
He fled the United States while his court case was still pending and managed to
avoid the American judicial system for over 30 years until 2009, when he was
arrested by the Swiss authorities at the request of the American government. However,
the American case for extradition was rejected by the Swiss authorities and in
July 2010 he was released from house arrest. Although the United States and
France had signed an extradition treaty in 1996 (1),
it did not apply to Polanski because France forbids extradition of its own
citizens.

The second recent case involved a woman
from Guatemala seeking asylum in the United States on the grounds that Guatemalan
women as a group are subject to an abnormal rate of murder and abuse in their
country. The case is still pending,  but
if the applicant succeeds it could lead to an increase in the number of
applicants for asylum by adding a large new category of people eligible for
asylum.

Wikipedia makes a distinction between
political asylum and the protection from generic repatriation of refugees and
other persons into war zones and disaster areas. (2) 
However, Article 33 of the 1951 United
Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees covers both groups under
the same heading. 

Linguistic
note:

English imported a French word to describe
the protection given to such persons by prohibiting such return:  “(non) refoulement”.   (This term is more commonly used in French to
describe driving back armies or, in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, to
describe a form of repression).

Evidence that the French word is
accepted in English is provided by the title of a book: International Legal Standards for the Protection from Refoulement. (3)

Another
French word used by the European Union in its English texts is acquis (both in the context of asylum and
more generally). The
terms acquis communautaire and (EU) acquis are used in
English texts on European Union law to refer to the total body of EU law
accumulated thus far.

Outside the field of
human migration, other French terms in the context of international law have
been adopted for want of suitable English alternatives. One such word is genocidiare,
meaning a person responsible for planning or committing acts of
genocide. English has no word for that.

Another example of a
French term for which there is no exact equivalent in English is force
majeure. This appears in contracts and treaties in order to exempt a
party from the consequences of events beyond its control. The nearest English
term is “Act of God”.

French-English
Glossary of terms of International Law

References:

The Council if
Europe French-English Legal Dictionary (International
Law)

(Council
of Europe, 1994)
 

Germaine’s French Law Guide (Claire M. Germain, 2001)

Glossaire de la migration (International Organization for Migration) 

Glossaire pénal internationale – La documentation française 

Institut français d’information juridique 

L'essentiel du droit international public, Catherine Roche, 7/2010

[1] http://www.amicc.org/docs/FranceExtrad96.pdf

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refoulement

[3] http://www.isbs.com/partnumber.asp?cid=27395&pnid=298269