Compare India's approach to refugees with the 1951 Convention framework.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, with its 1967 Protocol, is the cornerstone of global refugee protection, resting on a single refugee definition and the non-refoulement rule in Article 33 [1]. India hosts one of Asia's largest refugee populations yet remains outside this framework, governing refugees through executive discretion — a divergence sharper in law than in practice.

The Convention framework

• Status by definition: a uniform refugee definition, universalised when the 1967 Protocol removed the original dateline and geographic limit [1].
• Non-refoulement: no return to a country where life or freedom is seriously threatened; no reservations permitted, and States parties have recognised it as customary international law, binding even non-signatories [1][2].
• Guaranteed rights: access to courts, wage-earning employment and education, with protection against arbitrary expulsion [1].
• Individual determination: every claim assessed case by case, through a reviewable decision.

India's approach

• No ratification, no refugee statute: refugees are treated as "foreigners" under the Foreigners Act, 1946, a colonial aliens-control law that confers wide deportation powers and contains no idea of protection [3].
• Executive, group-based response: protection is extended by policy decision to specific communities (Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils), while others depend on UNHCR registration — generous in scale, but discretionary and unevenly applied.
• Judicial cushion, not a right: Article 21 extends to non-citizens, and in Mohammad Salimullah (2021) the Supreme Court barred deportation of Rohingya except by the procedure prescribed by law [4] — protection that is procedural rather than substantive.

The real gap India's humanitarian record substantially matches Convention outcomes; what it lacks is predictability — no statutory definition, no appealable status determination, and no explicit bar on refoulement, which customary law nonetheless imposes [2].

India's practice is therefore Convention-consistent in spirit but not in form. A domestic refugee law, retaining security screening while providing recorded, reviewable decisions on risk, would close this gap and honour Article 51(c) of the Constitution, which directs the State to foster respect for international law.