Report on the Performance of Activities of the National Preventive Mechanism for 2015 Ever since the beginning of the crisis, several teams of the Office of the Ombudswoman made 26 unannounced visits to 17 locations where refugees stayed on their way through the Republic of Croatia, especially border crossings, registration centres and facilities where they were accommodated. Apart from that, good cooperation and regular contact was achieved with the crisis headquarters, ministries, international organizations, civil society organizations, volunteers, local communities and other stakeholders, which gave us a more detailed perspective of the overall situation. The purpose of the visits was to determine how human rights and dignity of the refugees were respected, especially with regard to the provision of humanitarian aid, including adequate accommodation and healthcare, the possibility of seeking international protection and the treatment by the police. 2. DEFINITIONS OF TERMS AND LEGISLATION International sources A refugee is most broadly defined as a person who is forced to leave the place of his/her residence due to events that are beyond this person’s control and that can be caused either by natural elements or by human intervention. However, according to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereinafter: Convention), a refugee is any person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country. Under the same conditions, a refugee can also be a person without nationality who is outside the country of his/her habitual residence. The fundamental right of refugees under the Convention is the right to non-refoulment, i.e. the right not to be returned to their country of origin or to another country where their lives or liberty would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Apart from the Convention, the following documents also forbid refoulment, whether explicitly or by way of interpretation: Convention Against Torture, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. These documents, along with the General Declaration on Human Rights, are the sources that prescribe fundamental human rights and the rights of refugees, so international protection of refugees is therefore a part of the system for protection of human rights, seeing as fundamental human rights that a person enjoys do not cease based on the fact that the person has become a refugee. A person does not become a refugee by recognition of his/her refugee status by any country, but rather by fulfilling the requirements prescribed by the Convention and the above mentioned international documents. On the other hand, the exercise of almost all rights guaranteed to those refugees is left to the country that receives them. In that context, international and European refugee protection mechanisms take into account the sovereignty 37