ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the meaning of ‘protection’ under international refugee law and the theoretical underpinnings of refugeehood. It discusses how non-state actors have been considered in refugee decision-making and whether non-state actors can be actors of protection for the purposes of cessation. Non-state actors are increasingly playing a role in providing assistance in refugee source countries. In relation to cessation, the German Federal Administrative Court held in Bundesverwaltungsgericht 33.07 that the characteristic of ‘protection of country’ suggests that fundamentally there must be a state, reflecting that the era in which the 1951 Refugee Convention was created ‘was one of nation states’. The presence of non-state actors, such as multinational troops, which have a finite existence in asylum states, is not likely to lead to the stability and durability of change in country conditions which is required for cessation.
