LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF REFUGEE PROTECTION

Shauna E. Labman, University of British Columbia

Abstract

The origins of refugee protection are commonly associated with the aftermath of the Second World War and the huge outpouring of refugees that it sparked. The 1951 Refugee Convention, however, was in fact a revision and consolidation of previous international agreements relating to the status of refugees. In their own ways, all of the Convention’s predecessors responded to the refugee crises by facilitating the movement of refugees to safe states. With the 1951 Convention, in contrast, non-refoulement – the promise not to send people back to persecution – has come to be considered the core of refugee protection. While resettlement is indeed part of many countries’ current refugee schemes, it is voluntary, and therefore secondary, to the international legal obligation of non-refoulement. In a period when the fear of terror translates into a fear of foreigners and borders are turning into barriers, it is becoming increasingly difficult for refugees to reach safe states and trigger the legal obligation of non-refoulement. This article looks back to the refugee agreements made during the first half of the twentieth-century to argue that the international regime of refugee protection is as much about bringing refugees to safety as refusing to send them back to danger.