Can the UN’s Refugee Convention survive?

At the end of World War II, great swaths of Europe lay in ruins and millions had been forcibly displaced.

The humanitarian disaster prompted the United Nations to agree on a comprehensive legal framework outlining states’ obligations to protect refugees. This became the 1951 Refugee Convention, which initially applied to Europeans but was subsequently amended in 1967 to apply to all those fleeing persecution. Today, 149 nations are parties to the convention and no country has ever withdrawn from it.

At least, not yet.

Nearly eight decades later, the world is struggling. The Syrian civil war triggered an enormous influx of refugees into Europe. Now, millions of refugees have fled Sudan’s brutal civil war, state collapse in Venezuela has caused mass migration, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and many other conflicts around the world are in full swing, again causing mass displacements.

The UN currently records more than 41 million refugees worldwide.

The UN convention defines a refugee as a person who is outside their country of origin with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. The principle of non-refoulement – the stipulation that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they could be harmed – is a cornerstone of the treaty.

In recent years, some of the world’s richest countries have begun to roll out increasingly punitive policies towards refugees as populist, anti-immigration sentiment has taken hold.

Last month the Supreme Court ruled in favour of allowing the Trump administration to turn back asylum seekers at the border and remove temporary protected status (TPS) from Haitians and Syrians. This year refugee admissions to the US have been almost exclusively white South Africans.

Refugees attempting to reach Australia by boat are now either turned back at sea or sent to offshore detention facilities, leading to strong criticism from human rights organisations on the Pacific island of Nauru.

Denmark, which was the first country to sign the convention three-quarters of a century ago, has stripped Syrian refugees of legal status and threatened them with deportation after deeming those from Damascus and surrounding regions safe, despite the country still being under the control of the Assad regime at the time. It passed a sweeping package of reforms in 2019.

A decade on from the refugee crisis, fuelled by the Syrian war and which saw more than one million people flee to Europe, border guards in several European Union states now routinely conduct violent pushbacks. Greece turns back boats while Poland forces them over the border into Belarus.

A small inflatable boat carrying migrants from Afghanistan is towed by rescuers from the Refugee Rescue NGO, near Skala Sikamineas, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, on September 16, 2019 [File: Giorgos Moutafis/Reuters]

For campaigners, new European policies fly in the face of the convention’s principles, such as the right to territorial asylum and the principle of non-refoulement.

Adriana Tidona, migration researcher at Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera: “The new Migration and Asylum Pact will make it easier for EU countries to reject asylum applications without review, and send people to so-called ‘safe third countries’ to which they have no connection and where they have never even set foot.”

The 75th anniversary of the convention, Tidona said, is “an urgent reminder of the need to re-centre international cooperation in refugee protection and to share, not shift, responsibilities.

In the United States, the Trump administration is reportedly mulling withdrawing support from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, amid accusations that it pursues “a mass migration agenda”. It has also recently removed “protected status” for Syrian and Haitian nationals.

But for proponents of refugee rights, the Refugee Convention has its own limitations anyway.

While tens of millions have benefitted from its protection from persecution since 1951, others who are escaping different kinds of hardship such as poverty, climate change, natural disasters or gang violence, do not necessarily qualify under the criteria.

Without any specific court or treaty which can oversee and punish breaches, governments tend to interpret the convention according to their interests or even flout it altogether, experts say. According to Jeff Crisp at the Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre, who is also former head of policy development and evaluation at UNHCR, this is by design.

“The convention wouldn’t have been set up if there was enforcement,” he told Al Jazeera. “And the lack of it has become evident as the atmosphere around refugee protection has become more toxic.”

In recent years, Western governments have gone further than enacting anti-refugee policies; they have actively deported people to third countries to which they have no connection.

The former Conservative government in the United Kingdom sought to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, until the policy was overturned by the new Labour government in 2024. Italy has set up detention facilities in Albania and the US has sent deportees from multiple nationalities to countries including Iran, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Several EU countries, including Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, are now exploring the establishment of “return hubs” in Asian and African countries to process asylum seekers who cannot be returned to their home countries.

As states increasingly reinterpret or even flout the convention’s principles, Susan Fratzke, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said an update could address some of the existing gaps.

“A new protocol would avoid reopening some of the fundamental parts of the convention like the definition of a refugee and the principle of non-refoulement,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But by providing states with a sound legal basis for implementing more restrictive policies like safe third country or returns policies, you could also open up more protections for refugees like integration and the right to work.”

Removing safe routes

While the convention states that they should not be punished for entering countries irregularly to claim asylum, European governments from Greece to the UK have been detaining refugees under anti-smuggling laws in recent years.

At the same time, many of the same countries have removed or restricted safe routes for refugees such as family reunion pathways or resettlement schemes.

In 2025, only 37,000 refugees were resettled by UNHCR, down from 116,000 in 2024. With legal avenues disappearing and while people are required to be physically present in a country to access its asylum system, they are therefore increasingly reliant on smugglers to facilitate their movement.

About 65 percent of the world’s refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, meaning that the responsibility of hosting displaced populations primarily falls on the shoulders of low or middle-income countries.

Findings this month by polling company Ipsos, which questioned 21,000 people in 29 countries, suggest that public attitudes towards refugees may not be as hostile as politicians and media often claim, though it is still a mixed picture.

While two-thirds of Ipsos respondents said they support giving refuge to those fleeing war and persecution, a similar proportion questioned whether those claiming to be in need are indeed genuine. On whether borders should be closed to refugees, 49 percent agreed while 41 percent disagreed.

Ultimately, according to Crisp from Oxford University, there is no “big bang solution” for reform.

“We may have to accept the fact that the convention or a variant of it will remain, though not respected in practice, and governments will continue to take unilateral actions.”

And, Crisp warns, while Western countries may wish to reduce refugee protections, there may not be international consensus.

“So far the whole debate has been on the Global North’s terms, but the Global South may be resistant to making major changes, especially externalisation and containment policies that lead to a greater proportion of refugees remaining in their region.”