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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories on this weekly newsletter.
The author is a Labour peer and a former child refugee and MP
In 1938, 32 countries gathered in Evian, France, failed to succeed in an agreement to let in lots of of 1000’s of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Protection was depending on each country’s discretion on the exclusion of certain groups. For instance, Switzerland’s border restrictions allowed for the admission of political refugees but barred entry to “those that seek refuge on racial grounds, as for instance, Jews”. It wasn’t alone in denying safety to those fleeing Nazi persecution.
When the international community defined who has the proper to hunt asylum within the wake of the Holocaust, it was clear that it should be based on an individual’s need of protection from persecution and never left to countries’ discretion. And so, the 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK was instrumental in developing, was established.
The a long time since have proved repeatedly that the principles laid down by the convention remain relevant and vital. They include that refugees have the legal right to hunt asylum and recipient countries must not impose penalties on them. These have develop into fundamental tenets of recent civil society and the international rule of law.
It’s with alarm that I even have witnessed global efforts to unpick what the world was so clear-sighted in establishing. Within the UK, this began with the previous Conservative government misidentifying asylum seekers as “illegal” or “invaders”. At the identical time, they closed almost every secure path to the country available to refugees. Those fleeing conflict confronted a near perfect Catch-22: in the event that they got here to the UK via “irregular” routes they’d be deemed “illegal”, but they overwhelmingly only had access to “irregular” routes. In its very title, the Illegal Migrants Act of 2023 reinforced the message that asylum seekers were criminals.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act went even further. Its suggestion that asylum seekers needs to be banished and their bid for refugee status be determined in a distant, unaccountable country was flagrant in its disregard for the Refugee Convention.
The present Labour government’s recent decision to vary guidance on apply the “good character” requirement for British citizenship can also be unhelpful. If allowed to face, the amendment will punish refugees already settled within the UK by refusing them citizenship on the idea of how they travelled here.
Beyond the UK, a sweeping away of the rights of refugees is spreading, with offshoring, enforced repatriation and pushbacks already in place or under discussion in Italy, Hungary, and Austria. US President Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to threaten the mass displacement of thousands and thousands of individuals represents the worst excesses of this callous disregard for the protections established for us throughout 70 years ago.
Attacks on the rights of refugees is the canary within the coal mine. These now extend beyond the Refugee Convention to other instruments of international law including the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.
Some argue that because countries run humanitarian programmes in response to mass refugee and humanitarian crises, there isn’t a longer any need for the Refugee Convention. Prior to now 10 years within the UK, as an example, greater than 400,000 people in need of protection from countries equivalent to Hong Kong and Ukraine have arrived through temporary, nationality-specific visa schemes. Nonetheless, it is evident that these specific, limited and discretionary schemes are not any substitute for the elemental protections enshrined within the convention.
The worldwide community was once capable of arbitrarily refuse to save lots of the lives of lots of of 1000’s of individuals. My fear is that affording protections and safety to refugees is, tragically, becoming as unpopular today as offering protection and safety to lots of Europe’s Jews was in 1938.
