asylum, in international law, the protection granted by a state to a foreign citizen against his own state. The person for whom asylum is established has no legal right to demand it, and the sheltering state has no obligation to grant it.
The right of asylum falls into three basic categories: territorial, extraterritorial, and neutral. Territorial asylum is granted within the territorial bounds of the state offering asylum and is an exception to the practice of extradition. It is designed and employed primarily for the protection of persons accused of political offenses such as treason, desertion, sedition, and espionage. It has become a widespread practice, however, to exclude from this category persons accused of the murder of a head of state, certain terrorist acts, collaboration with the enemy in time of war, crimes against peace and against humanity, and war crimes. Extraterritorial asylum refers to asylum granted in embassies, legations, consulates, warships, and merchant vessels in foreign territory and is thus granted within the territory of the state from which protection is sought. Cases of extraterritorial asylum granted in embassies, legations, or consulates (generally known as diplomatic asylum) are often occasions for dispute. For example, after an unsuccessful uprising against the communist government of Hungary in 1956, the United States controversially granted diplomatic asylum to dissident Hungarian Roman Catholic József Cardinal Mindszenty, who was given refuge in the U.S. embassy and remained there for 15 years. Neutral asylum is employed by states exercising neutrality during a war to offer asylum within its territory to troops of belligerent states, provided that the troops submit to internment for the duration of the war.
It is the right of a state to grant asylum to an individual, but it is not the right of an individual to be granted asylum by a state. This perspective is reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which, though recognizing (article 14) the right “to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” does not explicitly provide a right of asylum. The original draft of that article, which referred to the individual’s right “to seek and to be granted asylum from persecution,” would have afforded more protection to asylum seekers. Similarly recognizing that “the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries,” the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which was adopted by the United Nations (UN) Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons in 1951, did not create a right of asylum for those seeking it, and the impressive array of rights it enumerates pertains only to those refugees “lawfully in” or “lawfully staying in” the sheltering state. Subsequent unsuccessful efforts to articulate an individual’s right of asylum included: (1) the UN General Assembly Declaration on Territorial Asylum (1967), which contained substantive exceptions to its non-refoulement (non-return) provision (pertaining to national security and to the safeguarding of its national population), and (2) a proposed Convention on Territorial Asylum, which never materialized.
In ancient times asylum designated a place of sanctuary or protection from which a person could not be removed forcibly without sacrilege. Later it came to signify an institution for the protection or relief of some class of destitute or otherwise unfortunate persons; its most common uses in this sense were in orphan asylum and insane asylum. See also safe-conduct.