Complicity in International Criminal Law and Canadian Refugee Law

摘要

International criminal law is normally seen as the purview of criminal prosecutions, either internationally or domestically. However, international criminal law is also increasingly being applied in refugee law. This is because the 1951 Refugee Convention contains an exclusion clause prohibiting asylum seekers from obtaining refugee status if they have committed a crime against peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity. Thus, refugee law refers back to international criminal law; however, while international criminal tribunals deal with persons who bear the greatest responsibility, in actual practice persons who have been excluded from refugee protection have been mostly from the lower echelons of organizations involved in atrocities. This article, based on Canadian case law, examines the concepts of complicity, aiding and abetting and joint criminal enterprise from both an international criminal law point of view and from a Canadian refugee law angle, in order to determine whether these notions have similar contents in the two jurisdictions.