The Ambiguity in Terminology Use of Asylum and Refuge in the Latin American and Caribbean Region
It seems that humans migrating from one place to another is an increasing phenomenon nowadays. Particularly, there are those who migrate involuntarily within the region or to other continents due to widespread and systematic violence as in Central American countries, or the acute crisis in countries of the region, such as Venezuela and Nicaragua, which are currently facing serious internal crisis. Another factor that contributes to migration is climate change, among others; however, the most serious reason nowadays is the armed conflict in Syria, which has resulted in more than five million international refugees. We are now living a human tragedy that exceeds the magnitude of the wars from the past. This has resulted in the frequent use of legal terms for international protection in the region, such as asylum and refuge. They are both used indistinctly, often in a vague and even confusing way, especially in the Latin American and Caribbean region. In fact, we see that in Latin America and the Caribbean (depending on the country or regional regulation) both terms are inaccurately used in internal legislations, sometimes referred to as synonyms. Such indistinct use is incorrect, as we will try to demonstrate in this work. Finally, as a conclusion, we will detail our proposals for terminology unification and differentiation of both legal protection concepts. For that matter, we have analyzed different Latin American regulations and regional legislations, such as the Brazil Plan of Action, and have stressed their inaccuracies. Furthermore, we have introduced two Advisory Opinions (AO) of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. First, we have AO-21/14, which is the case of Pacheco Tineo family vs. the Plurinational State of Bolivia, dated November 25, 2013, about an alleged inaccuracy committed by two organisms while trying to define asylum when it was a refuge case. Second, we have AO-28/18 upon the request of the Republic of Ecuador, where the Inter-American Court of Human Rights tried to conceptualize and differentiate both terms through an inclusive and enlightening classification of each of them.
