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UNHCR Home | 1951 Convention |
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The images were stark and shocking: in the heart of Europe, tens of thousands of people were fleeing terror and murder, inflicted by their own government, because of their ethnic background. Men, women and children, bundled in blankets and carrying whatever possessions they could fit into bags or, if they were lucky, broken down carts and rusting tractors, staggered into neighboring countries in search of safety. These images were eerily reminiscent of an earlier era, though they were not in the grainy black-and-white of the mid-1940s; rather, they were in color and transmitted live into every TV-owning household around the world just two years ago from Kosovo and the Balkan region. Five decades earlier the international community had faced a similar tragedy in the aftermath of World War II when millions of uprooted peoples wandered hungry and aimlessly through devastated landscapes and cities. In a spirit of empathy and humanitarianism, and with a hope that such widespread suffering might be averted in the future, nations came together in the stately Swiss city of Geneva and codified binding, international standards for the treatment of refugees and the obligations of countries towards them. The resultant, groundbreaking, 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees subsequently helped millions of civilians to rebuild their lives and has become “the wall behind which refugees can shelter,” says Erika Feller, director of the Department of International Protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “It is the best we have, at the international level, to temper the behavior of states.”
But on the 50th anniversary of its adoption, the Convention is coming apart at the seams, according to some of the same capitals which had breathed life into the protection regime a half century ago. Crises such as Kosovo have multiplied, spilling millions of people into headlong flight in search of a safe haven. Intercontinental travel has become easy and a burgeoning business in human trafficking has swelled the number of illegal immigrants. States say their asylum systems are being overwhelmed with this tangled mass of refugees and economic migrants and are urging a legal retrenchment. The Convention, they say, is outdated, unworkable and irrelevant. The treaty’s “values are timeless,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted recently. But he added that “with vastly increasing economic migration around the world and most especially in Europe, there is an obvious need to set proper rules and procedures… The United Kingdom is taking the lead in arguing for reform, not of the Convention’s values, but of how it operates.” Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch Prime Minister and recently appointed High Commissioner, has warned, however, that “many prosperous countries with strong economies complain about the large number of asylum seekers, but offer too little to prevent refugee crises, like investing in conflict prevention, return, reintegration.” In Europe, he said, “It is a real problem that Europeans try to lessen obligations to refugees… In any case, no wall will be high enough to prevent people from coming.” This debate is already taking place within the context of a series of meetings, termed ‘global consultations’, which UNHCR, as the guardian of the Convention, is holding with the 140 countries that have acceded to the original instrument and a subsequent Protocol, and other interested parties. Where it will all lead remains unclear.
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