Contesting the Universality of the Refugee Convention

Decolonization and the Additional Protocol

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12211368
AutoresItty Abraham (0000-0002-1604-0002, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ 85287, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen36
Número2
Páginas195-216
Fecha de publicación2023-04-05
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Refugee Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0951-6328 • E-ISSN: 1471-6925
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jrs/fead008
OpenAlexW4362641076
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas19

Recent scholarship has insightfully explored the colonial roots of the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. In this work I seek to extend this line of argument by situating the adoption of the Additional Protocol of the Refugee Convention (1967) in relation to the transformations of international order following the Second World War. Contra the conventional account, this article shows that the Additional Protocol was created in no small part due to fears that the UN Refugee Convention would be unable to claim universal status due to competing ‘regional’ refugee conventions. Breaking down four meanings of ‘universal’ and drawing on archival documents of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, I explore efforts by newly independent African and Asian countries to find voice in an exclusionary international order. Reading the Bangkok Principles and OAU Convention as collective subaltern resistance against efforts to discipline newly independent states offers new insights into contemporary international struggles and brings refugee studies into productive dialogue with critical international relations

Convention · International law · Political science · Politics · Ratification · Refugee · Sociology · Subaltern · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Law