According to the Refugee Convention, a refugee is someone who "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it."
Any signatory country has an obligation to grant asylum to anyone who is recognized as a refugee as defined above. There’s five criteria that must be met. You need:
- a well-founded fear: There must be a real possibility you face persecution for a convention reason. It doesn’t have to be high, but it cannot be theoretical. There’s no real threshold for what constitutes a real risk, but the U.S. Supreme Court has remarked the risk could be as low as 10%. That’s not a hard and fast number, and will be relative to the type of persecution faced.
- of persecution: Persecution doesn’t have a hard and fast definition, and that’s intentional. The writers wanted the convention to have enough flexibility to evolve with our understanding of what persecution is. Obvious things that count as persecution is torture, inhumane treatment, being put to death. This has to be a present and future danger, it’s not sufficient only to have faced persecution in the past.
- for reasons of of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion: It’s not enough that you risk persecution, it must be for a convention reason. It can be a combination of reasons, and it doesn’t have to be the only reason or even the main reason. It just has to be contributing factor. Lack of religion or political opinion is also covered. I’ll get more into this below.
- For that reason, your country must be unable or unwilling to protect you.
- You must be outside your own country.
From what you have written, it does indeed look like you might have a well founded fear of being persecuted based on religion. Since it’s the state doing the persecuting, you obviously cannot avail yourself of protection in your own country. You do, however, have to be outside of Saudi Arabia before you could be recognized as a refugee.
With persecution based on a convention reason, it’s not a requirement that you simply act discreetly. You aren’t excluded from refugee status if you can just quietly hide who you are.
The assessment itself is two-fold.
First, they’re going to look at your history, and you have the obligation to give as much information as possible to help in assessing your case. If you have any documents that prove your identity and your story, do bring them with you. Be as open and honest as you can in your interview. Your history must be “somewhat likely”, but even “somewhat likely” can be very hard to prove. Bring anything and everything that can help with verifying your identity. I cannot stress enough how important this is and how much this can affect the credibility assessment.
The risk of persecution is an assessment the country you apply for asylum in will do. They’ll look at your story, at information they receive from various sources, and any information they can gather locally. As mentioned above, there must be a real risk you face persecution if you are returned.
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