ISOLATION FROM INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Many state parties rely not only on domestic but also international legal sources to interpret the
definition of refugee in the Convention. The sources which are frequently used by state parties are
records of the Convention's negotiation history, the views of academic commentators and materials
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This tendency is a natural
consequence of the premise that the definition of refugee is supposed to be drawn from international
agreement and not from a state party's own interpretation.
In contrast, during the 1980s and 1990s, Japan kept its distance from the broad international view
and the practice of other states and international organisations when interpreting the term "refugee".
None of the refugee decisions in Japan seriously considered international legal sources. The
Tokyo District Court commented in HAUI v Takamatsu Immigration Control Office, Chief Inspector
on the evidential value of the UNHCR's Conclusions on the International Protection of Refugees adopted by the Executive Committee of the UNHCR Programme (EXCOM Conclusions) as
follows:
However, … the Conclusions of the UNHCR's Executive Committee do not legally bind the State Parties
to the Refugee Convention and the Protocol. Moreover, the members of the Executive Committee
[including Japan] do not have a legal obligation to observe the contents of the Conclusions of the
Executive Committee …