Refugee protection, a guide to international refugee law

57 years ago, the United Nations developed and adopted a Convention relating to the Status of Refugees worldwide. The Convention was a landmark in the setting of standards for the treatment of refugees. It incorporated the fundamental concepts of the refugee protection regime and has continued to remain the cornerstone of that regime to the present day.

On 28 July 1951, when the Convention was originally adopted, it was to deal with the aftermath of World War II in Europe even as the Cold War set in. The inspiration for the Convention was the strong global commitment to ensuring that the displacement and trauma caused by the persecution and destruction of the war years would not be repeated. But during the decades that followed, it globalised, and the 1967 Protocol expanded the scope of the Convention as the problem of displacement spread around the world. In these origins lies the Convention’s avowedly humanitarian character which ensures that its fundamental concepts remain intrinsically sound.

This handbook has beed developed to guide in the universal law of protecting refugees. Click below to download the document.