UNHCR official warns that the 1951 refugee convention is increasingly under threat

The U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday that governments around the world, especially that of the United States and countries in Europe, are increasingly undermining the global convention on refugees and asylum seekers — even threatening its very existence.

The stark warning by the UNHCR came on the 75th anniversary of the U.N. Refugee Convention, a 1951 document that defines who refugees are and outlines the responsibilities of countries hosting them.

Countries have moved to suspend applications for asylum — requests for international protection by those who say they face war or persecution for their religion, race, nationality, sexuality or for their political beliefs if they were to return home.

“I am not exaggerating when I say that the institution of the asylum worldwide is under more threat now than it has ever been,” Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, assistant high commissioner for protection at UNHCR in Geneva, told reporters during an online briefing from the Swiss city.

A piece of paper that saves lives

The U.S. under the Trump administration, and some European nations have increasingly restricted asylum and sought bilateral deals with third countries, especially in Africa, to deport migrants and, in some cases, transfer asylum responsibilities altogether.

Others, like Greece, which has seen a surge in Sudanese refugees arriving to the island of Crete, have temporarily suspended asylum processing.

“Those two pieces of paper have saved millions of lives in the past and will save millions of lives in the future,” she added, referring to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees adopted in the wake of World War II and the ensuing 1967 Protocol, which expanded protections to refugees worldwide.

A cash crisis world over

A global funding crisis in the humanitarian sector has impacted more than 122 million people displaced from their homes, fleeing conflict or persecution. A growing anti-asylum and anti-migration sentiment has added to their woes.

And though the arrivals of refugees in the global north “dominate the headlines,” Menikdiwela said, some "75% of the world’s 43 million plus refugees are actually being hosted in low-income and middle-income countries."

She cited the example of Chad, an East African nation that currently hosts 1.5 million refugees, the vast majority of them Sudanese who fled the brutal and ongoing civil war.

Menikdiwela, who recently visited a refugee camp in Chad, said the agency's programs there are vastly underfunded and unable to support urgent needs of the arriving refugees.

“There are people, men, women and children, wandering around with bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds," she said. Women and girls in particular have been subjected to unprecedented levels of sexual violence, Menikdiwela said, highlighting the case of an 80-year-old woman who reported being raped multiple times.