Asylum

In one line

Asylum is a State's protection of a person against the State that wants him, and the law gives the sheltering State a right and gives the individual almost nothing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: asylum is the protection granted by a State to a person on its territory or on premises under its control against the jurisdiction of another State. Territorial asylum, granted within the State's own territory, is a recognised incident of territorial sovereignty. Diplomatic asylum, granted in an embassy or other premises within the territory of the State from which the person is fleeing, derogates from that State's sovereignty and is not generally recognised in international law.

Asylum and extradition are the same question from opposite ends

A State asked to surrender a fugitive either extradites him or shelters him. Every ground on which extradition is refused, above all the political offence exception in [Extradition], is a ground on which asylum may be granted.

So the two chapters are one topic, which is why MU's own course objectives name them in a single sentence.

Territorial asylum

The rule. A State may grant asylum to a person within its own territory. It follows from territorial sovereignty: within its territory a State decides who may stay, and no other State may object.

Two things follow, and the second is the one students get wrong.

It is a right of the State, not of the individual. The State may grant asylum and no other State may complain. The individual cannot demand it.

The Universal Declaration says less than it appears to. Article 14 provides that everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution, and that this right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Notice the verbs: to seek and to enjoy, not to be granted. A proposal to give a right to be granted asylum was not accepted. The Declaration is in any event a General Assembly resolution, on which see [Resolutions of the General Assembly].

The real protection comes from refugee law, not asylum law. The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 and its 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who, owing to a 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 unwilling to avail himself of its protection. Article 33 contains the principle of non-refoulement: no contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on those grounds. There is an exception where there are reasonable grounds for regarding the refugee as a danger to the security of the country or where, having been convicted of a particularly serious crime, he constitutes a danger to the community.