non-refoulement

Meanings

1. The principle that a person (particularly a refugee) should not be returned to an area (chiefly their country of origin) where they would face mistreatment.

Etymology

From non- (prefix meaning ‘not’) + refoulement. Refoulement is borrowed from French refoulement (“act of pushing something back (as gunpowder into a gun barrel, or water by a dam); act of water overflowing; forced relocation of a group of people; forced repatriation of asylum-seekers or refugees”), from refouler (“to cause to flow or turn back; to repress, suppress; to repulse; to trample on again”) (from re- (prefix meaning ‘again’) + fouler (“to impress, stamp; to trample, walk on; to mistreat, oppress”) (ultimately from Medieval Latin fullare (“to make cloth denser and firmer by soaking, beating and pressing, to full”), from Latin fullō (“one who fulls cloth, fuller”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to blow; to inflate, swell”)) + -ment (suffix forming nouns from verbs, usually denoting resulting actions or states).