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[50] Under the Refugee Convention, refugee status depends on the circumstances at the time the inquiry is made; it is not dependent on formal findings. As one author puts it, “it is one’s de facto circumstances, not the official validation of those circumstances, that gives rise to Convention refugee status”: James C. Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees Under International Law (2005), at pp. 158 and 278. It follows that the rights flowing from the individual’s situation as a refugee are temporal in the sense that they exist while the risk exists but end when the risk has ended. Thus, like other obligations under the Refugee Convention, the duty of non-refoulement is “entirely a function of the existence of a risk of being persecuted [and] it does not compel a state to allow a refugee to remain in its territory if and when that risk has ended”: Hathaway, at p. 302; R. (Yogathas) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, [2002] UKHL 36, [2003] 1 A.C. 920, per Lord Scott of Foscote, at para. 106. The relevant time for assessment of risk is at the time of proposed removal: Hathaway, at p. 920; Wouters, at p. 99. This temporal understanding of refugee status under the Refugee Convention does not support the “binding effect” approach to earlier formal findings of refugee status.
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