Fitzmaurice, Peter --- "Between the Wars - the Refugee Convention of 1933: A Contemporary Analysis" [2012] ELECD 796; in Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne (eds), "The Challenge of Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Challenge of Human Rights

Editor(s): Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857939005

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Between the Wars - the Refugee Convention of 1933: A Contemporary Analysis

Author(s): Fitzmaurice, Peter

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

12. Between the wars ­ the
Refugee Convention of 1933:
A contemporary analysis
Peter Fitzmaurice

The modern study of the law of refugee protection conventionally com-
mences in the years following the Second World War. The immediate
post-war period saw the creation of the United Nations and the emergence
of the modern international human rights regime, with which refugee pro-
tection is closely entwined.1 The mass displacements caused by the war led
to the setting up of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency
in 1943, which by the war's end was tasked with refugee protection. In the
years following the war, European refugees were repatriated or resettled
under the aegis of the International Refugee Organization, which was
succeeded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as the
principal UN agency concerned with refugees.2
Finally, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees3 was drafted
and adopted in 1951. Although the definition of a refugee in the 1951
Convention was initially limited temporally to events occurring before 1
January 1951, and contracting states to the Convention could limit their
obligations geographically, to events occurring in Europe before that date,
these limitations were removed by the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status
of Refugees.4 The 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol taken together
are now universally considered the cornerstone of international refugee



1 `Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from

persecution' Art. 14 (1), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNGA ...