Article Four of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution". Political asylum has become an increasingly important issue surrounding human rights. There has been an accretion in the number of refugees seeking asylum in the past decade due to the high number of instances of civil strife. However, many of the richer nations deny refugees asylum on the basis of population control.

Despite being clearly stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, political asylum is definitely not fully guaranteed. Though many states ratified the UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, refugees often find that there is insufficient protection from the more powerful nations. In a report on political asylum, Refugees Face Barriers to Political Asylum, by Amnesty International, "[c]ountries which proclaim the importance they attach to human rights simultaneously force men, women and children back into the arms of the persecutors by obstructing access to political asylum procedures, misinterpreting the UN Refugee Convention definition of who is a refugee and forcibly returning those who are in need of protection" (Amnesty International. "Refugees: Human Rights Have No Borders"
Amnesty International Report, 1997. Human Rights: Opposing Viewpoints. Williams, Mary E., ed.
USA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1998) .

This practice that Amnesty International condemns, in which refugees are denied help and are forcibly returned to the state that they wish to escape from, is known as refoulement. Though refoulement is prohibited by an article in the UN Refugee Convention, many of the richer nations utilize a variety of ways to prevent refugees from seeking asylum, such as by misportraying refugees as people who really do not need help. Others are denied asylum because of visa requirements and carrier sanctions. Carrier sanctions essentially impose large fines on airlines or shipowners that allow people to board their craft who lack the required documents. Some asylum seekers in North America and Europe are detained while their applications are being reviewed. Detention is used as a way to discourage refugees from seeking asylum in a particular country. During their detention, the asylum seekers could live in harsh conditions without knowing when they will be set free.