Resisting Criminal Organizations: Reconceptualizing the 'Political' in International Refugee Law
Bibliographic record
Abstract
English Abstract: This article examines and reconstructs the term “political” in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Individuals may be eligible for refugee status if they can prove that they have a well-founded fear of persecution for, amongst other reasons, their political opinion. At the same time, individuals are excluded from obtaining refugee status where there are serious reasons for considering that they have committed a serious non-political crime. For those resisting persons or entities wielding oppressive power, the meaning of the term “political” in these provisions has particular importance. Where the targets of resistance are criminal organizations, however, courts and tribunals have been, for the most part, reluctant to recognize such resistance as manifesting a political opinion. Given the demonstrated power of criminal organizations, this article contends that opposition to these entities should be viewed as being “political”. Through an examination of the text, context, and purpose of the Refugee Convention, it argues that a broader understanding of the term “political” is reasonable if not compelling. The article examines the conflicting jurisprudence and discourse surrounding “political opinion” and “political crimes”. Despite some strong voices in support of a more traditional state-centric interpretation, others have advanced more robust articulations that account for the dynamic nature and diversity of power transactions between citizens and powerful non-state actors. Finally, the article examines the substantial power of drug cartels and youth gangs in particular Central American states to illustrate that they exercise de facto control in substantial geographic spaces. As such, resistance to such entities should properly be viewed as “political” within the meaning of the Refugee Convention. French Abstract: Cet article examine et reconstruit le terme «politique » tel qu’il apparait dans la Convention relative au statut des refugies de 1951. Un individu est admissible a l’obtention du statut de refugie lorsqu’il craint, avec raison, d’etre persecute du fait de ses opinions politiques. Cepen-dant, certains individus se voient prives du statut de refugie lorsqu’il existe des raisons importantes de croire qu’ils ont commis un crime non politique grave. La signification du terme « politique » revet donc une importance critique, particulierement pour ceux qui sont engages dans des actions de resistance contre des personnes ou des entites exercant un pouvoir oppressif. Les cours et les tribunaux sont generalement reticents a caracteriser de politique les activites de resistance aux organisations criminelles. Considerant le pouvoir important que possedent les organisations criminelles, cet article soutient que les activites de resistances a ces organisations criminelles devraient etre considerees comme etant «politiques ». A travers un examen du texte, du contexte et de l’objectif de la Convention, l’auteur avance qu’une construction moins etroite du terme « politique » est a tout le moins raisonnable, sinon probante. Cet article examine la jurisprudence et les discours contradictoires relatifs a la comprehension des termes « opinion politique » et « crime politique ». Malgre un appui vocal pour l’interpretation traditionnelle limitant ce qui est politique au domaine de l’Etat, plusieurs soutiennent une articulation plus robuste tenant compte de la nature dynamique et des sources diverses du pouvoir. Enfin, cet article examine le pouvoir substantiel des cartels de drogues et des gangs de rue dans certains etats de l’Amerique centrale de maniere a illustrer comment ces organisations exercent un controle de facto sur de nombreux territoires. En ce sens, la resistance a de telles entites devrait etre caracterisee de « politique » tel que defini par la Convention.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.085 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.029 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.014 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".