Symposium on the 1951 Refugee Convention at 75: Relevance, Clarity and Application

[Elizabeth Tan is the Director of UNHCR’s Division of International Protection and Solutions]

In 1951, in the aftermath of one of the most devastating wars the world had ever known, the international community recognized the need for international cooperation, grounded in law and humanity, for people who had fled their countries in need of safety and protection. In response, States adopted the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a landmark treaty establishing practical and principled standards for refugee protection. Its implementation would be overseen by UNHCR, the newly established UN body mandated to protect refugees and seek solutions to their displacement.

For nearly 75 years, the Refugee Convention has been the cornerstone of international protection. As a living instrument, it has been interpreted and applied to address evolving realities, from political oppression and social discrimination to forced recruitment, trafficking, conflict, gender-related persecution, and generalized violence. It has also inspired regional and national legal frameworks that together form a dynamic protection regime.

The Refugee Convention—and the institution of asylum—have saved millions of lives, and continue to do so every day. The principle of non-refoulement enshrined in the Convention is now recognised as customary international law and as such is binding on all States including those that are not party.

Yet, three-quarters of a century later, States face new pressures amid growing strain on multilateral cooperation. While there is broad agreement that those fleeing persecution must be protected, asylum systems in many regions are under significant stress. Mixed movements, security concerns, and the persistence of protracted displacement—often lasting decades—pose serious challenges, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where most refugees reside.

Against this backdrop, UNHCR is often asked whether the Refugee Convention can still meet today’s displacement challenges. Some argue that it is too dated to help States respond to contemporary asylum and migration pressures.

These concerns should not be dismissed. They reflect real pressures on State systems dealing with large-scale asylum arrivals and broader movements of people, often by irregular means. But they do not show that the Convention is no longer relevant. They require a closer examination of where the real difficulty lies: in the Convention itself, or in how it is understood, interpreted and applied today.

It is worth recalling that the Refugee Convention was, as the first High Commissioner expressed it at the Conference of Plenipotentiaries, conceived “in the spirit of humanitarian realism” (p. 18). The drafters saw its purpose as follows:

“to give refugees their proper standing in international law, and […] more clearly define their rights and duties, not only in their own interest but also in that of the governments of the countries in which they reside.”

(A/CONF.2/SR.2, p. 9)

From the outset, the Convention was conceived not only to protect refugees, but to clarify their legal position and define their rights and duties in ways that would also balance the interests of the States in which they reside. That dual purpose helps explain both its durability and its continuing practical value.

The question, then, is how the refugee protection framework should be applied amid today’s far more complex patterns of displacement.

Many of today’s challenges arise not from weaknesses in the Convention itself, but from inconsistent or insufficient implementation, and at times from misunderstandings about its purpose, content and scope.

Part of that misunderstanding lies in expecting it to deliver outcomes that it was never designed to achieve. The Refugee Convention was not designed to resolve all the challenges associated with contemporary mixed movements, nor to dictate how international cooperation should be organized. To address burden and responsibility sharing through international cooperation, States have adopted the Global Compact on Refugees, with its solutions-focused whole-of-society approach.

The Convention’s function is narrower but no less essential: to ensure that those in need of international protection can be identified, protected against return to persecution, and afforded a legal status that enables them to live in safety and dignity.

The Refugee Convention’s core purpose is to ensure that people needing protection can find safety in a country where they will not be returned to persecution. It also provides the legal framework within which they can live with dignity for as long as protection in their own country remains unavailable. Its provisions set out the blueprint—agreed by States—for including refugees in national systems and managing a condition that may be temporary in law but must not become permanent precarity in practice.

The continuing value of the Refugee Convention lies in what it enables States and decision-makers to do. It provides the legal basis for secure status, access to rights, and inclusion in national systems. It supports recognition of civil status and professional qualifications, access to employment and enterprise, and standards of treatment that allow refugees to contribute to the societies that host them. It also gives States tools to address legitimate safety and security concerns in respect of particular individuals.

At the same time, effective protection today requires more than the existence of sound legal standards. The shortcomings we see do not stem from the standards of international refugee or human rights law, but from uneven implementation. International refugee law is not always easy to access or interpret, and effective implementation depends on clear guidance. In fulfilling its supervisory responsibility under international refugee law, UNHCR has long assisted States and other partners in applying these standards, notably through the 1979 Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status, 14 Guidelines on International Protection, and other legal documents that have shaped refugee law and practice worldwide.

A key part of the response lies in clearer, more accessible and more comprehensive interpretative guidance. States, courts, legislators and practitioners need authoritative, up-to-date guidance not only on who qualifies for refugee status, but also on the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers, and the limits that international law permits States to apply in particular circumstances.

Without that clarity, asylum systems risk producing decisions that are inconsistent or based on avoidable legal error, resulting in diminished public confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of protection decisions.

UNHCR has therefore launched a multi-year project to update and consolidate its core interpretive framework on refugee protection. The project will integrate the 1979 Handbook and the 14 Guidelines into a single, structured reference for the 21st century: a new Handbook on Refugee Law. 

The new Handbook will have a wider scope than its predecessor, covering refugee status criteria, the rights of refugees under international law, and standards for procedures and evidence in refugee status determination. It will be produced in three volumes covering these topics and through a staged process. The new Handbook will reflect the latest developments in international law and doctrine and in the laws and jurisprudence of States and will benefit from input from a range of different stakeholders working with and for refugees. Its purpose is to promote greater coherence, legal certainty and fidelity to the Convention and regional refugee instruments across asylum systems by clarifying how the existing framework should be understood and applied today.

The Convention’s interpretation and application have never depended on UNHCR alone. They have also been shaped by courts, academics, civil society, practitioners and State officials, as well as by the lived experience of refugees themselves. The new Handbook is therefore being developed in collaboration with these crucial partners, alongside experts with lived experience of displacement. 

The Convention’s seventy-fifth anniversary is a moment not only to defend its continued relevance, but to insist on its effective application. If international protection is to remain credible in the years ahead, the Convention must be applied with greater clarity, consistency and practical effect.

Photo attribution: by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash