The greatest challenge facing refugees arriving in the developed world has traditionally been to convince authorities that they are, in fact, entitled to recognition of their refugee status. What level of risk is required by the “well-founded fear” standard? What sorts of harm are encompassed by the notion of “being persecuted”? Is there a duty to seek an internal remedy within one's own country before seeking refugee protection abroad? What is the meaning of the five grounds for protection, and what causal connection is required between those grounds and the risk of being persecuted? Most recently, significant attention has also been paid to the nature of the circumstances under which a person may be excluded from, or deemed no longer to require, protection as a refugee.

While debate continues on these and other requirements for qualification as a Convention refugee, there is no denying that the decade of the 1990s gave rise to a marked increase in both the extent and depth of judicial efforts to resolve the most vexing definitional controversies. Senior appellate courts now routinely engage in an ongoing and quite extraordinary transnational judicial conversation about the scope of the refugee definition, and have increasingly committed themselves to find common ground.