According to the UNHCR brochure on the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, in the aftermath of World War I (1914 -1918), millions of people fled their homelands in search of refuge. Governments responded by drawing up a set of international agreements to provide travel documents for these people. The number of refugees increased dramatically during and after World War II (1939-1945), as millions more were forcibly displaced, deported and/or resettled.
Throughout the 20th century, the international community steadily assembled a set of guidelines, laws and conventions to ensure the adequate treatment of refugees and protect their human rights. Refugees have existed throughout history, but an awareness of the responsibility of the international community to provide protection and find solutions for refugees dates primarily from the time of the League of Nations. The League of Nations initially defined refugees by categories, in relation to their country of origin. In August 1921 the Council of the League appointed a High Commissioner for Russian Refugees. By 1923, the word “Russian” was deleted from the title and the position was then called High Commissioner for Refugees, for in the meantime the problem of Greek and Armenian refugees had arisen. On 1 January 1925 responsibility was transferred to the Refugee Section of the International Labour Office (ILO). The High Commissioner’s Office remained within the administration of the ILO until 1929. On 1 January 1930 the High Commissioner’s Office returned to the Secretariat of the League of Nations.
In 1939, the League Inter-Governmental Committee for Refugees (IGCR) was created. The IGCR worked until 1947 when it, in its turn, ceased to exist. It was replaced by the International Refugee Organization (IRO), an institution under the authority of the United Nations set up to deal with the problem of refugees in Europe in the aftermath of World War II. IRO was to be terminated by 30 June 1950. It was soon apparent, however, that the comprehensive nature of the task it had been assigned— to address every aspect of the refugee problem from registration and determination of status, to repatriation, resettlement, and “legal and political protection”— precluded winding up of that international effort. There was also a growing conviction of the importance of a multilateral approach to resolving refugee problems.
Thus, in December 1949 the UN General Assembly decided to replace the IRO with the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which was established for an initial period of three years, as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly under Article Twenty-two of the UN Charter. On 14 December 1950 the General Assembly adopted the Statute of the UNHCR. UNHCR’s tasks were to provide international protection for refugees and to seek permanent solutions to their problems by assisting governments to facilitate their voluntary repatriation or their assimilation within new national communities.
On 28 July 1951 the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted by the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons convened under General Assembly resolution 429 (V) of 14 December 1950. The Convention originally protected the hundreds of thousands of persons displaced during World War II and applied only to persons in Europe who became refugees prior to 1951. As the refugee problem continued throughout the world in the following decades, the UN recognized the need for an international legal framework to protect all refugees. A 1967 Protocol to the Convention extended protection under the Convention to all refugees, regardless of when or where they became refugees.
These instruments clearly spell out who is a refugee and the kind of legal protection, other assistance and social rights a refugee is entitled to receive. They also define a refugee’s obligations to host countries and specify certain categories of people, such as war criminals, who do not qualify for refugee status.
They have also helped inspire important regional instruments. In 1969, the Organization of African Unity Convention on the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (OAU Convention) established a significant advance from the 1951 Convention in its recognition of the security implications of refugee flows, in its more specific focus on solutions— particularly on voluntary repatriation, in contrast to the integration bias of the 1951 Convention— and through its promotion of a burden-sharing approach to refugee assistance and protection. In 1984, a group of Latin American governments adopted the Cartagena Declaration, which like the OAU Convention, added more objectivity based on significant consideration to the 1951 Convention. Both regional instruments expanded the definition of refugee to more realistically account for contemporary root causes of flight, such as war, internal conflict, and massive human rights abuses.
The Convention and the Protocol together remain the legal cornerstone of refugee protection. The Convention entered into force internationally on 22 April 1954 and the Protocol entered into force on 4 October 1967.