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1. - THE FACTS
- On January 3, 1949, around 9 o'clock in the evening, Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, a Peruvian citizen, went to the hotel of the Colombian Embassy in Lima to ask the ambassador, Mr. Carlos Echeverri Cortés, to grant him the diplomatic protection of asylum, as his freedom and life were in danger.
- Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre is a well-known man of letters and publicist in the American continent, and he is, moreover, the leader of a political party in Peru. His political activity has long drawn attention to his qualities as an orator and leader of the masses. His programs have been the subject of fierce controversy, not only in his country, but in all the intellectual circles of Latin America. It was therefore to be foreseen that his presence as a refugee in a foreign embassy in Lima would be a political problem of particular importance for the Government of Peru, apart from the question of international law that the exercise of the right of asylum in America poses in each concrete case.
- The Government of Colombia granted to Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre Victor Raul Haya de la Torre the benefit of asylum, on the basis of both the Bolivarian Agreement on Extradition signed in Caracas on July 18, 1911, and the Convention on Asylum approved by the Sixth International American Conference, held in Hava§na from January 16 to February 20, 1928, whose article 2 establishes the following rule: "The diplomatic agent, head of a warship, camp or military aircraft must, immediately after granting asylum, give notice of it to the Minister of Foreign Relations of the State to which the refugee belongs, or to the administrative authority of the place, if the fact has occurred outside the capital. " In accordance with these provisions, the Colombian ambassador in Lima sent a note the next day, January 4, 1949, to Rear Admiral Federico Diaz Dulanto, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Peru, informing him that he had received Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre at the embassy as a political refugee, and making the request referred to in article 2, paragraph 3, of the Havana Convention, so that the said refugee could go abroad. The text of this note, dated January 4, 1949, number 2/1, is attached to this Memorandum (Annex I).
- Diplomatic correspondence followed the notification made by the Government of Colombia, in the course of which the controversy between the two Governments concerning the asylum granted to Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre became clear.
In its successive communications, the Colombian Government made the following points (a) The right of asylum, as it is established and practiced in America, entails for the State granting asylum the power to qualify the nature of the offense attributable to the refugee. (b) This power, which is the very basis of the American institution of asylum, would be rendered ineffective if the territorial State could obstruct its exercise, and the safety of the refugee would thereby be compromised. (c) Before being incorporated into American positive law, this principle was already part of the customary law of the continent, as demonstrated by the consensus gentium of the American States. (d) The faculty in question has been accepted not only as a custom, but also as a rule of American positive law. e) The diplomatic history of Peru has recorded numerous cases in which that country has applied or recognized the said rule, either as a state granting asylum or as a territorial state. (f) Peru has accepted the validity of this rule in specific cases between itself and Colombia. (g) There is therefore no reason to derogate from this rule in the case of the political refugee Mr. Victor Raul Haya De la Torre On its side, the Peruvian Government supported in its correspondence the following theses: (a) That the rule of qualification of the nature of the crime by the State granting asylum could not in any case have the obligatory character attributed to it by the Colombian Government. b) That the precedents invoked by the Government of Colombia in support of its doctrine were merely cases in point. (c) That the principle of qualification by the State granting asylum is contained only in the Montevideo Convention of 1933, signed but not ratified by the Republic of Peru. (d) That, consequently, since this Convention is not applicable to the particular situation of Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, the Government of Peru could not accept "the unilateral imperative qualification" advocated by Colombia. e) That, in addition, Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre had been cited by a special jurisdiction, the investigating judge of the Navy, in a trial for "military rebellion", but that he would be guilty in addition of "terrorism" f ) That in virtue of these considerations, Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre could not benefit from the guarantees stipulated in Article 2 of the Havana Convention on Asylum.
the one which Your Excellency's Government will consider preferable. "As for Colombia, the procedure is indifferent to it. My Government is so convinced that in this case it has reason on its side that it does not hesitate to leave to Your Excellency's Government the choice of the legal course to be adopted. In response to this suggestion, the Government of Peru informed the Government of Colombia, in its note No. (D) 6-8/6, dated April 6, 1949 (Annex 8), that it accepted judicial recourse before the International Court of Justice.
- The Peruvian Government's reply gave rise to further exchanges of views between the parties on the procedure by which the proceedings should be brought before the International Court of Justice. These exchanges of views were entrusted to specially accredited plenipotentiaries, who met in Lima in the last days of August 1949 and finally signed the minutes (Acta) of the 31st of that month, the text of which is attached to this Memorandum (Annex 11). We transmit to the Court, for information, the text of the statement made to the press on April 7, 1949, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia (Annex 9), as well as the notes exchanged between the Parties after April 6, 1949, and up to September 1949, when the (Annexes 10, 12, 14 and 15.)
- Once the exchange of views through diplomatic channels had been completed, the Government of Colombia initiated the present proceedings on the basis of Article 7 of the Colombian-Peruvian Protocol of Friendship and Cooperation of May 24, 1934 (see League of Nations Treaty Series, Instrument No. 3.786) and the agreement on certain procedural modalities reached between the Parties and recorded in the said minutes (Acta) of August 31, 1949 (Annex 11).
II. - THE LAW
Basis of the Application Summary
- The International Court of Justice is called upon to decide, by virtue of the application addressed to it by the Government of Colombia on October 15, 1949, the following questions: "First question: Within the framework of the obligations arising, in particular, from the Bolivarian Agreement on Extradition of July 18, 1911 and the Convention on Asylum of February 20, 1928, both of which are in force between Colombia and Peru, and, in general, from U.S. international law, is it or is it not up to Colombia, as the country granting asylum, to qualify the nature of the crime for the purposes of the aforementioned asylum? "Second question: In the concrete case of the dispute, is Peru, as a territorial State, obliged or not to grant the necessary guarantees for the refugee to leave the country, respecting the inviolability of his person?
- The Government of Colombia asks the Court to rule in the affirmative on these two issues, taking into account both the facts set forth in the preceding pages and the legal grounds that will be developed in this chapter.
- The legal grounds were presented in the request of the Colombian Government, which is expressly based on : A. On the general and special obligations of the Governments of Peru and Colombia arising from the following instruments: "(a) the Bolivarian Agreement on Extradition of July 11, 1911; (b) the Convention on Asylum, approved and signed at the American International Conference of
B. On the particular legal nature of the American institution of asylum, recognized by American
positive law and by the practice of the States of America since the last century. C. In general, on the norms of American positive and customary international law.
The Court will find in these indications of U.S. international law a sufficient basis for concluding, as we ask, that the Bolivian Agreement did not result in the creation ex novo of an ability for the State to grant asylum to political refugees, but merely constituted the recognition of a norm of customary law established by the precedents and experiences known or provided by the signatory countries. b) If, on the one hand, the rules of the American law on asylum are the object of a simple statement by the authors of the Bolivarian Agreement, who do not create these rules but recognize their existence, this instrument establishes, on the other hand, the ease with which the signatory States that have ratified it can apply the institution of asylum. The Bolivarian Agreement alone deserves the attention of the Court for the way in which it has stipulated that asylum is part of a phenomenon well known in the science of law, The Institution". The institution" is an integral idea of a legal act. It is also a system of norms which, either in the field of private law or in that of public international law, exceeds the will of human persons or of States, in the sense that it possesses its 'own being'. However, throughout its existence, the institution is subject to perpetual renewal and gives rise to new creations or new social and legal relationships that derive from the original idea. The predominant role of the constitutive idea in the institution, as well as the objective and statutory character of institutional relationships, has been emphasized by the doctrine. The institutional juridical act is thus not, like the contract, a simple manifestation of will, but it derives its effectiveness from the desired idea" (see Georges Renard, La théorie de L'institution, Paris, 1930, and, by the same author, La philosophie de l'institution, Paris, 1939). A detailed study of this point of law is not necessary. It is worth noting, however, the difference between the contract or the treaty, instruments which depend for any change on the will of the Parties ("Pacta sunt servania") and the institutional juridical act, which does not need this consent to evolve, since it has its own virtue. For the jurist, the "institution" is a reflection of a certain category of social relations. One must also note that this institutional conception of law has ceased to be a distinct part of the philosophy of law and has become a general theory of law" (cf. P. Delos, La théorie de L'institution, Archives de philosophie du droit et de sociologie juridique, Paris, 1931, first fascicule, p. 97).
By applying this doctrine, the Court will be able to clearly understand what the authors of the Bolivarian Agreement intended to mean by the word "institution", introduced in article 18, namely that asylum was not an isolated fact, but a system already established and whose rules of application had been specified as it evolved historically. Finally, it should be noted that the article in question contains a norm whose flexibility was calculated to adapt the institution of asylum to the new modalities of application that might be necessary in the future due to the evolution of American international law. Therefore, the Court finds justified the conclusion that Article 18 of the Bolivarian Agreement of July 18, 1911, had the effect of homologating a custom in law and constitutes, on the part of the signatory States, the acceptance of a "rule-act" for the exercise of the right of asylum.
- The Convention on Asylum adopted at the 6th Pan-American Conference held in Havana in 1928 constitutes the second source of obligations for the Parties. This Convention established the following rules: a) Article 1, paragraph 1, states: "States are not permitted to give asylum in legations, warships, camps or military aircraft to persons accused of common crimes or to deserters from land or sea.” The negative and prohibitive form used in this article with regard to common criminals allows, a contrario sensu, to affirm that the States that have ratified this Convention have the widest faculty to grant asylum to political refugees. However, the Court may note that, as appears from the diplomatic correspondence between the parties, the Government of Peru has never contested the sovereign and legitimate right of the Government of Colombia to avail itself of this faculty. Therefore, it is not necessary to go into the analysis of the question of principle involved in the said provision in this Memorial, and to examine in this way whether or not a State has the right to grant asylum to political refugees. (b) Article 1, paragraph 2, reads, "Persons accused or convicted of common crimes, who take refuge in any of the places mentioned in the preceding paragraph, shall be surrendered as soon as the local government requires." The above provision has three consequences:
“Asylum for political offenders in legations, on warships, in camps or on military aircraft shall be respected in so far as the custom, conventions or laws of the country of refuge admit it as a right or as a matter of humanitarian tolerance, and in accordance with the following provisions : I. Asylum can only be granted in cases of emergency and for the time strictly necessary for the refugee to reach safety in another way. II. The diplomatic agent, the head of a warship, camp or military aircraft, immediately after granting asylum, shall give notice of this fact to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State to which the refugee belongs, or to the local administrative authority, if the fact has occurred outside the capital. III. The government of the State may demand that the refugee be removed from the national territory as soon as possible; and the diplomatic agent of the State which has granted asylum may in turn demand the necessary guarantees for the refugee to leave the country, the inviolability of his person being respected. IV. Refugees may not be disembarked at any point in the national territory or in a place too close to it. V. During the period of asylum, refugees shall not be permitted to perform acts contrary to public tranquility. VI. States are not obliged to pay the expenses incurred by the one granting asylum. Despite the importance of these provisions regulating the right to asylum, the Government of Peru has not raised any challenge to the Government of Colombia in this regard. The latter granted asylum to Mr. Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre in the premises of its embassy in Lima, and, based on the power conferred on it by article 2, paragraph 1 of the aforementioned convention, it considered that the circumstances that had given rise to the refugee's asylum and that put his person in danger had not yet disappeared. It should also be pointed out that the Colombian Government promptly notified the Peruvian Government of the presence of Mr. Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre in its embassy, and that it took all the necessary measures to ensure that the refugee would not be able to carry out any act that would be contrary to public peace.
The American institution of asylum
- The Court will certainly be interested in the history of the American institution of asylum. Without dwelling on the origins of territorial refuge, the practice of which among civilized States goes back to ancient times, or on the evolution of international law in the matter of asylum, by virtue of which, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the traditional right of asylum was restricted to political refugees, it is appropriate first of all to examine the relationship between the law applied in Europe and the special right of asylum for diplomatic agents which has prevailed in the Latin American republics since the early years of their independence. Then, we will briefly examine the modalities of the political life of the Latin American States in the 19th century that led to the recognition of this special right of asylum.
- From the beginning of the 19th century, the public law of Europe and that of the New World took as a basis, in the political and civil order, a notion of the freedom of man and citizen which made the latter inviolable. There was thus between the individual and the State a social relationship that allowed the exercise of the right of opinion and of political freedom in general. The revolutions were not in these conditions any more spontaneous uprisings of the masses, but examples of an evolution accelerated by leaders whose violence or ambition exceeded sometimes the idealism. It is hardly necessary to say that during the 19th century the young Spanish-American republics received these influences and followed this movement of political ideas that Mr. Édouard Hemot has called "the dynamism of liberty" (Édouard Herriot, Aux sources de la liberté, Paris, 1939).
- Thus, states adopt the notion of a special status for political offenders in order to spare them the consequences of unjust punishment. It is well known that since the publication of Provó Kluit's pamphlet, De deditione prolugorum in 1829, the special juridical character of political offenses has been generally recognized, both to refuse the extradition of political offenders and to grant them the benefit of territorial asylum in foreign countries. As early as 1802, Louis-Gabriel de Bonald was opposed to the surrender of political refugees, and in 1815 the principle was proclaimed in the English House of Commons by Sir James MacKintosh. In 1826, the Government of Great Britain applied the same principle in refusing to hand over to the Czar's Government one of the authors of the St. Petersburg uprising, while in 1828 and 1829 the Government of the Netherlands adopted an identical
the expected tyrant, who dominates, for twenty or thirty years, the national life." (Francisco Garcia Calderon, ii The Latin Democracies of America II, Paris, 1912, P. 72.) It is obvious that, under these conditions, the system of territorial asylum and non-extradition of political refugees, practiced and generally accepted by European states, met a pressing need in Latin America. and generally accepted by European states, met a pressing need in Latin America. The legitimate defense against unjust reprisals, the right of preservation, the safeguard of personal integrity, as well as that of the essential rights of citizens, required in this part of the world, so troubled by revolutions, the attribution of a special juridical character to political offenses. However, Latin America made these principles evolve. The problem of the political freedom of the citizen was inseparable from that of protecting his personal security against the consequences of revolutions, and it was necessary to find a quick and safe way to give refuge to those who were being persecuted by a government when it wanted to punish its political enemies for reasons of the same order; and this way could only be the traditional asylum transformed into a diplomatic asylum. This is how the American institution of asylum came into being. In addition to these considerations, there are geographical circumstances, such as the often enormous distances separating the main centers of the Spanish-American republics. The numerous means of communication existing in Europe are often scarce on the American continent, which accentuates the urgency of diplomatic asylum when revolutionary events arise. Territorial asylum in this part of the world is, above all, a geographical impossibility. This explains why, in the face of such events, legations become the place where political figures find the guarantee of their individual security
- The American institution of asylum, with its particular characteristics on this continent, is, in short, the result of two coexisting phenomena, one in the realm of law, the other in the realm of political facts, which have been manifested throughout the history of this group of states; on the one hand, it is the authority of the democratic principles of respect for the human person and freedom of opinion and, on the other, it is the exceptional frequency of revolutions and armed struggles that have often made the security and lives of those who have been on the side of the defeated precarious after each internal conflict.
- For reasons of varying nature and scope, in the early years of the application of American asylum, several European governments, as well as the Government of the United States of America, contributed to the general accretion of the system through their interventions in this field. The diplomatic history of Latin America offers numerous examples in this regard, of which the following are the most characteristic: a) In 1850, the former President of the Republic of Ecuador, Mr. Roca, took refuge in the consulate of Colombia (then called Nuevo Granada) in Quito, and later in that of the United States, after having abandoned power as a consequence of a revolutionary movement. (See Tobar y Borgono, "L'asile interne devant le droit international 11, Paris, 1911, p. 293). b) In 1865, the President of the Republic of Peru, General Pezet, and his ministers took refuge in the French Legation in Lima. Shortly after, the revolutionary Government demanded that they be handed over, but the minister of France refused to comply with this summons. "The right of asylum granted by the legation of France was, it was answered, in conformity in all points with the feelings of humanity to which France always conformed its conduct. II (See Carlos Wiesse, "Le droit international appliqué aux guerres civiles", Lausanne, 1898, p. 203.) c) In 1874, the United States Minister in Bolivia, Mr. Reynolds, granted asylum to two persons named Criales and Pozo. On February 20, 1875, in a communication addressed to Mr. Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. Reynolds said, among other things: "For common crimes against the laws of the country, the American flag could offer no protection. As to merely political offenses, (he is assured that) the Government (of the Republic of Bolivia) and the administration of President Frias would not wish to prejudice the persons involved." (John Basset Moore, A Digest of International Law, Washington, 1906. volume II, p. 781,) d) In 1898, the diplomatic agents of Brazil, the United States and France in Bolivia established by mutual agreement certain rules for granting asylum. On this occasion, the U.S. Minister, Mr. Bridgman, wrote to Mr. Hay, Secretary of State in Washington: "There is in South America a deeply rooted idea, at least among the people, that a foreign legation would legally constitute a refuge." (Moore, op. cil., P 784.) e) In 1891, the conflict between Chilean President Balmaceda and the Chilean Congress led to the asylum of Agustin Edwards and Eduardo Matte in the United States Legation in Santiago. On
Based on this rule, the argument tells us that the same solution should be applied to the conflicts resulting from the asylum referred to in article 18 of this instrument, which reads: "Apart from the stipulations of this agreement, the signatory states recognize the institution of asylum in accordance with the principles of international law. The silence of the authors of the Bolivarian Agreement regarding the aforementioned rule could not be interpreted as meaning that another system different from the unilateral qualification should apply to asylum. This difference in systems would be inadmissible in itself, that is, if it were to lead to the application of a different method for the qualification of the crime in the operation of two institutions - extradition and asylum - with the same purpose of protecting the human person. Moreover, the rule of unilateral qualification of the nature of the crime of the refugee by the requested State was considered a principle of international law when the Bolivarian Agreement was signed in 1911, and its application is thus authorized, as far as the institution of asylum is concerned, by virtue of the very provisions of article 18 of that agreement. This is clear from the practice generally followed by the States of the American continent, as well as from the main multilateral instruments signed by the Latin American Governments before 1911 on extradition and asylum, namely, the Extradition Treaty signed in Lima on March 27, 1879, The Treaty of Extradition signed in Lima on March 27, 1879, by the American Congress of Jurists, the Treaty of International Criminal Law approved by the South American International Congress of Private Law on January 27, 1889, as well as the Treaty of Peace and Friendship concluded in 1907 by the Central American Republics.
- Thus, the signatories of the Bolivarian Agreement, including the Governments of Colombia and Peru, referred to the "principles of international law" for the implementation of the asylum. In this case, the Parties intended that the norms of general international law could serve as an instrument of interpretation of the U.S. asylum. In order to understand this reference, which could be surprising in an exclusively Latin American agreement, it should be remembered that American international law was at that time in a formative period not yet embodied by permanent bodies of the continental legal system. Therefore, the signatory States of the Bolivarian Agreement wanted to use the norms already incorporated in the general international law for the application of the asylum. However, it is a universal rule of legal interpretation that obligations of any kind, bilateral or multilateral, must be carried out according to the will of the
Parties and according to the terms of the contract, that is to say, with all the scope that the Parties would have given to the provisions of the convention. Whatever one's opinion of the elements constituting a political offence, international jurisprudence accepts the rule which grants the requested State the right to assess the nature of the offence in extradition treaties and in the application of asylum. This principle had in fact been formulated in most of the treaties concluded since 1830. Thus, Article 5 of the Convention of August 14, 1876, signed between France and Great Britain, stipulates the following "No accused or convicted person shall be surrendered if the offence for which extradition is requested is considered by the requested party to be a political offence or an act connected with such an offence. The same principle is included in other treaties signed by the principal States of Europe, such as the Franco-Spanish Convention of 14 December 1877 and the Treaty of 11 March 1890 between England and the United States. In order to justify this doctrine, according to which the requested State is competent to know and decide on the nature of the refugee's political offence, the great majority of authors admit that "the requesting country does not present the necessary guarantees of impartiality to make this assessment in a sound manner. "It would be to be feared," adds the same author, "that, under the influence of political passion, it would distort the character of the act of which the fugitive is accused and would not request extradition for a political offence under the qualification of ordinary law." (Ludovic Beauchet, Traité de l'extradition, Paris, 1899, p. 205.) The Institute of International Law, in its 1880 session held in Oxford, laid down the following principles among the rules on extradition "XIII. - Extradition may not be effected for political reasons. "XIV. - The requested State shall make its own assessment of the circumstances as to whether or not the act for which extradition is requested is of a political character. "In this assessment, it shall be guided by the following two ideas: "(i) Acts which have all the characteristics of ordinary crimes (murder, arson, robbery) must not be excluded from extradition solely on account of the political intention of their perpetrators. "(ii) In assessing acts committed during a political rebellion, insurrection or civil war, it must be considered whether or not they would be excused by the customs of war.
An exact formula for such a system is the right to unilateral imperative qualification by the State granting asylum. This, it seems to us, is the scope of Article 2 of the Havana Convention. b) The right to qualification conditions the legal security of the refugee. A study of the fundamental provisions of this article, as well as of all the provisions of the Havana Convention, leads logically and necessarily to this consequence: the right of the State granting asylum to qualify the nature of the crime is the very condition of the refugee's security. It is therefore not merely from a theoretical point of view, but on the basis of the positive law governing relations between the Parties that the Government of Colombia has claimed in its various notes addressed to the Government of Peru that the American institution of asylum includes, first of all, a right to the imperative unilateral characterization of the crime. This right clearly belongs to the State granting asylum, in this case the Republic of Colombia. Indeed, it would be impossible to interpret the Havana Convention in a different way from the one we have just stated, without distorting the very purpose of the institution of asylum. The Court could not forget, in fact, that the purpose of this institution is the protection of an individual against the injustice that he could be subject to from a State. It would therefore be contrary to the principles of legal certainty, which is the basis of this institution, to grant the right of qualification to the State which, precisely, is in a situation of partiality towards the refugee. Asylum itself would be completely non-existent without the right of qualification implied in article 2 of the Havana Convention. Thus, when the policy of a State is the source of great danger for an individual, when the latter sees his essential rights compromised and, above all, when he may fear that he will not be in a position to defend himself in an exceptional judicial procedure that this State would visibly prepare for political reasons, this individual has the right to seek asylum, and the State that grants him asylum has the faculty to defend him and the duty to avert, by the right of qualification, the danger that threatens him. Legal basis of the qualification made by Colombia
- The above conclusions are also based on the express provisions of the Havana Convention, which are directly applicable to the present case. These are the provisions formulated in the first paragraph in fine of article 2, which foresee that "the asylum of political offenders in legations, on warships, in camps or on board military aircraft shall be respected insofar as the custom, conventions or laws of the country of refuge admit it as a right or as a matter of humanitarian
tolerance" etc. This implies, in relation to the concrete situation of the matter of the litigation, that the custom, the conventions and the laws of Colombia with regard to the asylum constitute in this case the code that must necessarily govern all the modalities that the application of the norms of the asylum involves in the present case. The problem is thus decided in advance in favor of our thesis, because Colombia only claims in the circumstance the execution of the essential rules that are incorporated in its own customs, laws and international obligations regarding asylum, namely, the rule of qualification of the crime of the "asylee" by the State of refuge.
- The Government of Peru has undoubtedly argued that the rule of unilateral characterization of the refugee by the State granting asylum is only expressly contained in article 2 of the Montevideo Convention of 1933, and that this Convention would not be applicable in the case of Mr. Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, since Peru has not ratified this Convention. But this argument seems to us to be based on a misunderstanding: it is a fact, certainly, that the Convention of Montevideo cannot constitute in strict law an obligation for the Republic of Peru before the same instrument has been ratified and the ratification deposited according to the rules of the constitutional law of that country. rules of the constitutional law of this country. However, the question is not whether, in the present case, the Government of Peru is or is not willing to comply with the provisions of the Convention on Asylum signed by it in Montevideo in 1933; the question that arises and that the Court must judge is that of the application by the Republic of Colombia of an international convention duly ratified by its Government, a convention whose provisions relating to the regulation of the asylum of political offenders form part of its internal public law. In this respect, the fact that the Government of Peru has not ratified the Monte-Video Convention cannot, in the matter before the Court, have any influence on the unilateral characterization made by the Government of Colombia on the basis of that Convention. For in the American system of asylum, the territorial State has only a passive right, namely, the right not to suffer any prejudice as a result of the presence of the refugee in its territory, either in the internal public order or in its relations with other States. Duly interpreted, the stipulation of article 2 of the Havana Convention, according to which the legal character of the asylum of political offenders depends on its conformity with the custom, conventions or laws of the country of refuge, entails - we repeat - the obligation for the
