This period also proved to be crucial in building international solidarity and burden-sharing in the difficult search for solutions. One of the most important milestones was the International Conference on Refugees and Displaced Persons in Southeast Asia, held in 1979 in Geneva. It occurred at a time when the world watched, aghast, as thousands of Vietnamese fled their country in flimsy boats, vulnerable to the violence of the sea and of pirates, only to be pushed back as they reached the shores of neighboring countries. The conference produced a three-way agreement: Association of South East Asian Nations countries promised to provide temporary asylum; Vietnam promoted orderly departures in place of illegal exits; and countries agreed to accelerate the rate of resettlement.

Changing Nature of Conflict

During the 1980s and 1990s, the environment for the international refugee protection regime began to change. The number of refugees grew exponentially, from a few million in the late 1970s to some 22 million persons of concern to UNHCR today. These individuals became refugees not as a result of colonialism but because of internal conflicts in newly independent states. These conflicts were first fueled by superpower rivalry and then aggravated by socioeconomic disasters in developing countries while a globalizing world grew complacent about illegal trade in arms and mineral wealth.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in massive population movements in subsequent years as inter-ethnic conflicts began to heat up with the end of the Cold War. Human-rights abuses and breaches of humanitarian law were no longer by-products of war; they were part of military strategy. Even low-level conflicts and massive displacement generated disproportionately high levels of suffering among civilians. For example, 2.5 million people were displaced in or fled to Iran from northern Iraq in 1991. More than four million people were assisted by UNHCR in the former Yugoslavia, and the Great Lakes crisis of 1994 forced three million people to flee their countries. The prospect of lasting political solutions to these and other refugee-producing conflicts seemed virtually non-existent. UNHCR had little choice but to embark on prolonged aid programs for millions of refugees in overcrowded camps.

Asylum countries became increasingly concerned about receiving large numbers of refugees without the possibility of early repatriation, and the impact on the international refugee-protection regime was grave. Large-scale refugee flows were, and continue to be, perceived as a threat to political, economic, and social stability in the host countries. In traditionally hospitable asylum countries, the presence of refugees came to provoke hostility and violence. Governments increasingly closed their borders or pushed refugees back to danger and, in some cases, even death.

Then, as now, the voluntary nature of repatriation became relative, at best. Refugees return to countries struggling to emerge from lengthy wars, where peace is fragile, infrastructure weak, and the future uncertain. The decision to return is often based not on changes at home but rather on the inhospitable, even hostile, conditions in the host country. In some cases, rapid outflows are followed by equally sudden and large-scale return movements of people to their country, only to be followed again by outflows within a short period.

The Convention Under Siege

In the developed world, the threat of uncontrolled migration and the perceived cost of asylum has led many states to rework their asylum policies and practices, often to the detriment of refugee protection. Two parallel trends have emerged, both negatively affecting the accessibility and the quality of asylum. One is the preference for increasingly restrictive interpretations of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, together with the establishment of formidable obstacles to prevent legal and physical access to a nation’s territory. Unfortunately, these restrictive approaches export well and are already being replicated in regions where refugee laws are only now being established and where the deleterious effects are not mitigated in any way by a culture of human-rights protection.

In addition, there has been a proliferation of alternative protection regimes that guarantee fewer rights for a more limited period of time than does the 1951 Convention. Yet, there is little harmonization of these asylum policies, even within regions. Partly in response to this situation, asylum-seekers who have failed to prove their claims, lawyers seeking protection solutions, and judges considering protection needs have increasingly turned to human-rights instruments as alternative sources of protection. Indeed, there is now an impressive body of jurisprudence established by such bodies as the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention Against Torture Committee that focuses on the non-refoulement—or non-expulsion— provisions of the instruments overseen by these bodies.

At the same time, some states have criticized the 1951 Convention. It has variously been labeled outdated, unworkable, irrelevant, or overly rigid in the face of significant changes in irregular migration patterns. Several states have deemed it unresponsive both to national interests and to refugees’ needs and are therefore considering withdrawing from it.

In this climate, it is important to remember the facts. Refugees have always entered countries illegally—often without proper documentation and with the help of smugglers. This does not detract from their refugee status; on the contrary, it may confirm that status. Furthermore, economic migration and the smuggling of migrants is not new. Attempts by would-be migrants to use asylum channels for entry, in the absence of migration programs, should not invalidate the asylum process.

Over 90 percent of all refugees stay in their regions—mostly areas within the developing world. Only a small percentage of refugees make it to developed countries, and developing countries bear most of the responsibility for processing and accommodating refugees and asylum-seekers. While developed states apply a narrow interpretation of the refugee definition, developing countries apply a much broader definition, such as that found in the OAU Convention. The existence of this discrepancy between definitions often leads the claims of some rejected asylum-seekers to be labeled as bogus when they are merely the victims of the more restrictive interpretation.

The fact that the Refugee Convention is 50 years old does not invalidate its key role in the international refugee-protection regime. Human-rights principles are not weakened with age. It is equally essential to be clear about what the Convention is and what it is not. The Convention is not a migration-control instrument. It is not a bill of general rights and does not set out rights and responsibilities without proper limits. Nor is it a safe haven for terrorists. The Convention is the most comprehensive instrument at the international level to safeguard the fundamental rights of refugees and to regulate their status in countries of asylum. It is, for UNHCR, the place where refugee protection starts. That is why, over the past year and continuing through 2002, UNHCR has been engaged in a series of discussions with governments, nongovernmental organizations, academics, and experts on refugee law with the aim of both reaffirming the centrality of the Convention to refugee protection and devising fresh tools, practices, and thinking on how to address new problems.