DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2018.v06i03.010

Pages: 542-546

An effort has been made in this paper to make a review on the provision of human rights of refugees and legal provision thereof in India. Although there are international institutions for the protection of refugees, still ultimately the protection of refugees depends on individual sovereign states which have to follows their respective national legislation. States have the responsibility to protect refugees by reason of their accession to international instruments, by reason of their own legislation, by reason of their political and moral commitments, or by reason of customary international law. In its ninth session in 1954, the United Nations General Assembly recognized that ‘the ultimate responsibility for the refugees within the mandate of the High Commissioner fall in fact upon the countries of residence’. Government of India has enacted the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993. The Act provided for the constitution of a National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) State Human Rights Commissions (SHRC) and Human Rights Courts (HRC) for better protection of human rights and for matters connected or incidental thereto. These recommendatory bodies have powers to inquire into the violation of human rights or abetment thereof. The Commission is not restricted to investigating issues of concerns to citizens only and in fact it also considers the matters relating to all human beings including the rights of refugees in India. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which was established by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 is the main body entrusted with promoting and protecting human rights. The Human Rights Acts vests the NHRC with a broad mandate but it only has the power to issue recommendations and does not have any effective enforcement mechanism at its disposal. NHRC has functioned effectively for the protection of refugee’s human rights in India. It is true that a declaration of Fundamental Human Rights is meaningless unless there is effective machinery for