Survey of Protection Provided to Palestinian Refugees at the National Level INTRODUCTION This chapter presents a set of “Country Profiles” presenting protection mechanisms currently available for Palestinian refugees worldwide under domestic law and jurisprudence of state signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or the Statelessness Conventions. As will become clear, national interpretations and applications of Article 1D of the 1951 Geneva Convention vary considerably. The use of the term “Palestinian asylum seeker” reflects the reality in which Palestinian requests for asylum are processed in the countries surveyed. As will be demonstrated, Palestinian refugees, in the sense outlined in Chapters One and Two, often arrive in those countries as asylum seekers, with their refugee status put in question by national refugee status determination processes. Even where Palestinians are granted refugee status under Article 1D, this is generally not done “automatically” (as it should be under the “ipso facto” provision of the second paragraph of Article 1D), insofar as the reasons for leaving their country of habitual residence are investigated and, as this survey will show, often play a decisive role in their final status. This Survey includes information on thirty non-Arab countries signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention.381 It was conducted during 2013 and 2014 by BADIL, with the help of numerous lawyers and practitioners (see list of contributors below). Despite considerable efforts to gather complete relevant information from the countries included, time constraints and the varying quality and quantity of available information allowed for only partial achievement of this goal. Notably, comparatively little information could be gathered about Latin American countries, and, as relatively few Palestinian refugees have sought refuge in Africa, information is given about only four countries which host relatively higher numbers of Palestinian refugees (Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa). This Survey provides information essential to the main purpose of this Handbook since its first edition, namely, examining if, and how, international protection standards available for Palestinian refugees are implemented by national authorities, 381 76 Arab countries were excluded from this survey because: i) Arab states, in particular those in the Middle East, are directly implicated in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict, both as major host countries of Palestinian refugees and as political actors and have, therefore, developed particular regimes and policies vis-à-vis Palestinian refugees (see BADIL, Closing Protection Gaps: A Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees in States Signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Chapter One); ii) UNRWA’s mandate and operations in many Arab states, UNRWA memoranda of understandings with these states and the relationship between UNRWA and UNHCR in this region would require detailed discussion beyond the scope of this Handbook; and iii) very few Arab states are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Israel, as the country of origin and country causing displacement and persecution of Palestinian refugees, was also not included. Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees