The 1951 Refugee Convention | UNHCR (2024)

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The 1951 Refugee Convention

Rather than asserting the right of individuals to stay home or to return home and enjoy basic human rights, the Convention has thus institutionalised the notion of exile as a solution to refugee problems. Exile is an inappropriate solution to modern refugee problems and in an age of globalisation and regionalisation.

Important non-signatory states in South and Southeast Asia include India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia. In other regions of the world, non-signatory states include Eritrea, Libya, Mongolia and Cuba.

Although Iraq is not a State party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the country has long been host to refugees, who were recognized on a prima facie basis or through individual status determination.

Upon accession to the 1951 Convention, Egypt entered into reservations with regards to articles 12 (1) (Personal Status), 20 (Rationing), 22 (1) (Public Education), 23 (Public Relief) and 24 (Labour Legislation and Social Security).

The core principle of the 1951 Convention is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, the bedrock of international protection for people forced to flee their homes, has saved countless lives. Today, on its 70th anniversary, its critics claim it is the outdated product of another era.

Wary of international obligations, President Truman refused to sign the U.S. government on to the convention.

An asylum seeker is someone who is also seeking international protection from dangers in his or her home country, but whose claim for refugee status hasn't been determined legally. Asylum seekers must apply for protection in the country of destination—meaning they must arrive at or cross a border in order to apply.

Since the US ratified the Protocol in 1968, it undertook a majority of the obligations spelled out in the original 1951 document (Articles 2-34), and Article 1 as amended in the Protocol, as "supreme Law of the Land".

Has China signed the 1951 Refugee Convention? ›

China ratified the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, in September 1982. It has since been an active participant in the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, a panel of countries advising UNHCR and approving its budget.

1967 Protocol broadens the applicability of the 1951 Convention. The 1967 Protocol removes the geographical and time limits that were part of the 1951 Convention. These limits initially restricted the Convention to persons who became refugees due to events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951.

Three figures dominated the IRO input into the 1951 Refugee Convention: Paul Weis and Gustave Kullmann, who worked on refugee-related issues during the Second World War and who both went on to work for UNHCR after the IRO was wound up, and Jacques Rubinstein, a Russian refugee who helped author the 1928 League of ...

Farouk I (/fəˈruːk/; Arabic: فاروق الأول Fārūq al-Awwal; 11 February 1920 – 18 March 1965) was the tenth ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and the Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 1936 and reigning until his overthrow in a military coup in 1952.

The 1951 Convention also protects other rights of refugees, such as the rights to education, access to justice, employment, and other fundamental freedoms and privileges similarly enshrined in international and regional human rights treaties.

Britain colonized Egypt because it wanted to control that country and profit off its economy. It also wanted to secure its access to Asia.

It has since become a global document, largely unchanged but for some minor enhancements in its 1967 Protocol. If we left an antique untouched in an attic for seven decades, we wouldn't be surprised to find it has started to look shabby. The same idea holds for the institutions and documents that govern us.

Ratified​ by 145 State parties, the convention defines the term “refugee” and outlines the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal obligations of nations and states to protect them. The U.S. government declined to ratify this convention. , which the U.S. government did ratify.

These rights are written down in the Refugee Convention and in human rights treaties. These rights deal with the possibility of staying in the host country and not being returned to the country of origin (e.g. non-refoulement), education, health care, housing, employment and family among other issues.

The definition

The problem is that the vast majority of people we think of as refugees are not outside of their country because of fear of persecution for any of those reasons, but are simply fleeing violence – their home is no longer safe: for example it has become a war zone.