International refugee law The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,20 which provides the main legal framework for protection and assistance for refugees. According to this Convention, refugees are those who have been forced, or have no other option but to flee their homes, and have crossed an international border: The inspiration for the Convention was the strong global commitment to ensuring that the displacement and trauma caused by the persecution and destruction of the war years would not be repeated.21 According to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the term “refugee” shall apply to any 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; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. Internally displaced persons The United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement defines internally disoplaced persons to be, “[…] persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of 20 The majority of Palestinian refugees fall under a different legal framework. At the time of the drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention, there were already two UN agencies providing protection and assistance to Palestinian refugees and searching for durable solutions: the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was mandated to serve as an alternative �� i.e., a safety net – if protection or assistance provided by UNCCP and UNRWA would “cease for any reason” (Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention), in order to ensure continuity of protection for the Palestinian refugees. As stated by the High Commissioner for Refugees: “While paragraph 1 of Article 1D is in effect an exclusion clause, this does not mean that certain groups of Palestinian refugees can never benefit from the protection of the 1951 Convention. Paragraph 2 of Article 1D contains an inclusion clause ensuring the automatic entitlement of such refugees to the protection of the 1951 Convention if, without their position being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant UN General Assembly resolutions, protection or assistance from UNRWA has ceased for any reason.” Note on the Applicability of Article 1D of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees to Palestinian refugees. Available at: http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/68C845ADCFF3671A85256C85005A4592; For more information, see: BADIL Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights, Closing Protection Gaps: A Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees in States Signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention. 21 UNHCR, REFUGEE PROTECTION: A Guide to International Refugee Law, at foreword, available at http:// www.refworld.org/pdfid/3cd6a8444.pdf. 12