Original scientific paper

International Refugee Law − Its Development Till the Crisis

Milan Mesić ; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

At the beginning of the paper, the author presents a review of the emergence and development of international refugee law, starting from the 1920s, when the international community was confronted, for the first time, with the problem of Russian refugees after the October Revolution. The author then describes early efforts made to provide an international definition of the concept of refugees and to formulate basic principles of protection, at first for some groups of refugees, and then for all refugees. He also indicates actual political interests and the dependence of international aid to refugees on the relations of power in the world. Special attention is given to the genesis and significance of the still valid basic document of international refugee law − the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951). Expansion of refugee law in the 1950s and 1960s rested on a growing body of accepted human rights, as a form of “soft law”. Namely, greater and greater refugee rights are not supported by an obligation of states and of the international community to actually realize them. This became evident during the asylum crisis in the later half of the 1980s, when wealthy countries tightened conditions for receiving asylum and refugee status, and also openly violated the basic norms of refugee law. In the poor countries of the Third World refugees can more easily realize their right to a first place of asylum, but often they cannot secure for themselves even elementary conditions for survival. In many places refugees do not have even freedom of movement. Finally, the author indicates that the international system of aid and protection of refugees is in crisis, and that a new strategy should be developed which would be directed to eliminating the fundamental causes of refugee flows.

Keywords

international refugee law; refugees; human rights

Hrčak ID:

127255

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/127255

Publication date:

29.11.1993.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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