ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses the relevance of social trauma to the legal definition of refugee status under the major instruments of international protection in the area, mainly the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1967), as well as applicable EU Asylum Law. It demonstrates that the preconditions related to the extra-psychical elements of social trauma greatly overlap with the preconditions required for the granting of the status of refugee under the Geneva Convention, as well as for the granting of the status of subsidiary protection under the EU Asylum Law. It concludes that this close relationship between the asylum law and social trauma is not a coincidence, as it is born of the same human experience, seen from two separate disciplines of thought.
