e to Beirut port's grain silos (C) and the area around it on August 5, 2020, one day after a mega-blast tore through the harbour in the heart of the Lebanese capital with the force of an earthquake, killing more than 100 people and injuring over 4,000.

The 2020 Beirut Port explosion deepened Lebanon's economic crisis, a point often overlooked by immigration tribunals (AFP via Getty Images)

The protection paradox: How refugee law fails those fleeing failed states

Legal definitions rooted in 1951 miss today’s reality – many people flee state collapse, not specific persecutors.

Guita G. Hourani

7 July 20255 min read

Asylum systems worldwide are built on a mid-20th-century understanding of flight: individuals escaping repressive governments or militias, targeted for who they are or what they believe. But across the globe today, millions flee not from a single persecutor, but from the slow implosion of entire states.

Protection collapses when courts stop functioning, law enforcement is either incapacitated, politicised, or complicit, when government corruption and financial schemes bring countries to their knees, or when an armed non-state actor becomes part of the ruling power.

Despite decades of reform, the international refugee system remains structurally unprepared for this reality.

Legal definitions remain largely tethered to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which centres on targeted persecution – leaving little space for those escaping systemic collapse.

Legal definitions remain largely tethered to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which centres on targeted persecution – leaving little space for those escaping systemic collapse, even when no state or group can protect them. The result is a growing mismatch between legal categories and real-world displacement.

We have seen this in countries as varied as Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Sri Lanka – where people flee not only persecution, but the collapse of state protection itself. Their displacement stems less from identity-based targeting than from the failure of institutions to guarantee even basic safety and rights. Their suffering is no less real, though their claims may be harder to articulate within the current legal language of refugee law.

Lebanon offers a compelling case study.

Since 2019, Lebanon has faced one of the worst economic collapses in recent history. Banks froze deposits, the currency plummeted, and institutions – especially the judiciary – were paralysed by political gridlock and the growing power of an armed non-state actor. The 2020 Beirut Port explosion deepened this paralysis, obstructing investigations and undermining accountability.

Despite these conditions, immigration tribunals – particularly in North America – often assess Lebanese asylum claims within constrained legal frameworks that may not fully reflect on-the-ground realities. As a country-of-origin expert who has submitted reports in hundreds of such cases, I’ve seen how legal reasoning can overlook the scale of collapse.

Despite decades of reform, the international refugee system remains structurally unprepared for the current reality (Salah Darwish/Unsplash)

In one US case, a woman fled militia threats after joining anti-corruption protests. Police took no action. The judge ruled the threats were personal, not political, without engaging the broader context of an armed non-state actor’s governance role and the state’s inability to respond.

Another man, persecuted for anti-militia views, was told he could relocate within Lebanon – a country smaller than the US state of Connecticut – where sectarian, political, and familial networks eliminate any true “elsewhere”.

Canada has issued similar rulings. In 2020, a protester who received death threats from a militia for anti-government activism was denied asylum, reflecting the presumption, still present in some rulings, that formal state protection mechanisms remain available. But what protection can a paralysed judiciary influenced by the same militia truly provide?

This challenge appears across a growing number of country contexts. Many asylum seekers from Syria, Somalia, and Sudan may not meet the prescribed criteria of persecution by a state or militia, yet they flee from environments where the absence of protection is just as dangerous. Courts in the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom have at times rejected claims from these contexts, reflecting the difficulty of accommodating systemic collapse within existing legal definitions of persecution.

Even when people are not directly targeted for their identity, they may still be unable to survive or find protection in their home country.

Part of the problem lies in the legal tools used to assess claims. When systemic collapse is framed as merely an “economic” or “governance” crisis, it obscures the state’s inability to protect. And when legal reasoning demands an “identifiable persecutor”, it overlooks more diffuse, yet devastating, threats.

This gap in legal reasoning reflects a global failure to adapt protection frameworks to the realities of modern forced displacement. Structural collapse generates a condition of rightlessness: where protection is absent, accountability is elusive, and citizens fall through the cracks of their own legal systems. Refugee law, as currently interpreted in many jurisdictions, often struggles to fully address these situations.

Even when people are not directly targeted for their identity, they may still be unable to survive or find protection in their home country. This is especially true for those vulnerable to militia control, sexual violence, or targeted economic coercion – threats often overlooked unless they fit established legal categories.

There are urgent policy implications. Countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia sometimes operate under assumptions that relocation within the country is feasible, that state institutions are functioning, or that economic collapse can be managed. These assumptions can create barriers that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable asylum seekers, pushing some towards irregular migration.

To their credit, some jurisdictions have developed complementary protection mechanisms, such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States or humanitarian visas in the European Union. However, these measures remain discretionary, inconsistent, and often influenced by political considerations.

What is needed is a multi-tiered shift in approach.

The 1951 Refugee Convention remains a foundational document, but it no longer reflects the complexity of today’s displacement crises. There is a growing case for updating international protection frameworks to better account for state collapse and institutional failure. A revised framework should ask whether a state can guarantee rights and protection – not merely whether an individual can identify a specific persecutor. Such a shift would enable courts and governments to more accurately respond to modern causes of asylum seeking.

While each asylum case is evaluated individually, and some adjudicators are attentive to broader collapse contexts, the structural limitations of current legal definitions can still produce inconsistent or inadequate protection outcomes.

Lebanon’s crisis exemplifies a growing global pattern. As displacement becomes increasingly driven by state disintegration rather than targeted persecution, asylum systems that cling to mid-20th-century frameworks may produce flawed determinations that fail to account for contemporary protection needs. The consequences of inaction are clear: when legal systems lack the tools to recognise collapse as a ground for protection, this can result in protection gaps for those facing some of today’s most complex and devastating forms of forced migration – not because their suffering is less real, but because our legal categories have failed to evolve.

About the author

Guita G. Hourani

Dr Guita G.

Topics

International law Lebanon Migration & refugees