UN Refugee Convention

The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted at a UN conference in Geneva on July 28, 1951, and entered into force in 1954. It defines a refugee as someone outside their country who has a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Its core rule, in Article 33, is non-refoulement: a state may not send a refugee back to a place where their life or freedom would be at risk.¹

The treaty was made in the shadow of the Second World War and the Holocaust, which left millions of displaced people in Europe. Earlier efforts, such as the League of Nations' Nansen passports for stateless Russians and Armenians, gave a model, and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized a right to seek asylum. The UN created the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1950. The original text applied to people displaced before January 1, 1951, mostly in Europe, and the 1967 Protocol removed those limits. About 145 states are parties. Today more than 110 million people are forcibly displaced, and disputes over asylum, border controls and who qualifies as a refugee are central to politics in many countries.¹²