{"id":259577,"date":"2025-12-31T09:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T09:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259577\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T09:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T09:23:08","slug":"how-western-powers-are-pushing-to-re-write-refugee-law-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/259577\/","title":{"rendered":"How Western powers are pushing to re-write refugee law \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the year a taboo broke against seeking changes to human rights treaties considered pillars of international law since they were agreed in the aftermath of the second World War<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The year 2025 saw a shift in the political mainstream in Europe<\/a> and the United States<\/a> towards open calls for the reform of treaties including the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which were drawn up with the aim of avoiding a repeat of the 20th century\u2019s worst horrors.<\/p>\n

\u201cA taboo has broken around the 1951 Refugee Convention,\u201d said Dr Sophie Capicchiano Young, a lawyer specialising in international refugee law who is Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie Fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s saying the quiet part out loud. This is something that has been, to my mind, brewing for the better part of 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representatives of the United Nations have warned that plans in Europe and the United States to try to \u201coffshore\u201d parts of the asylum process pose the greatest threat the international system of asylum has ever faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese treaties have spelt the difference between life or death for millions. But, these instruments and their principles are increasingly questioned,\u201d UN secretary general Ant\u00f3nio Guterres said in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe answer is not to push aside the Refugee Convention. States have the right to control their borders. But, they also have a duty to protect those fleeing for their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ratified by 140 countries, the Refugee Convention defines who is a refugee and sets out their right to seek safety, prohibiting \u201crefoulement\u201d: the forcible return of people to a place where they will be persecuted.<\/p>\n

\"MigrantsMigrants walk on the US side of the border wall after crossing from Mexico last year. Photograph: Frederic J Brown\/AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Its agreement was partly driven by a failure to agree on refugee rights before the second World War, which had catastrophic consequences.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Deportations are a \u2018critical element\u2019 of an asylum system, says senior UN refugee officialOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The \u00c9vian Conference of 1938 was convened to discuss whether tight immigration rules could be relaxed to help those then desperately seeking to leave Nazi Germany and Austria.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is obvious that we can make no real contribution to the resettlement of refugees,\u201d Irish delegate Francis Cremins told the conference, echoing the position of most states in attendance. He offered his \u201csincere sympathy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Agreed at a United Nations assembly in Geneva, the Refugee Convention provided protection for the millions of people who had been displaced in Europe by the war.<\/p>\n

It was extended by a 1967 Protocol to apply to refugees anywhere in the world, and it was written into national legal codes as well as core texts establishing the European Union.<\/p>\n

Even as international migration policy hardened in the subsequent decades and western governments pursued policies seen by some legal experts as at odds with the treaty, it was still seen as a landmark of international law and calls to revise or update the text itself were unusual.<\/p>\n

When Suella Braverman, then UK home secretary, called for the treaty to be updated in 2023 in a key speech amid jostling for the leadership of the Conservative Party, it made international headlines.<\/p>\n

\"LeaderLeader of D66 (Democrats 66) Rob Jetten alongside journalists the day after the Dutch parliamentary election vote in The Hague. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt\/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

It spurred open criticism from academics, legal experts, and even rare pushback from the UN itself, which said that if anything needed to change it was swifter decisions on asylum by national authorities.<\/p>\n

Just two years later such calls are heard much more widely, and are no longer seen as radical.<\/p>\n

D66, a liberal, pro-European Union party in the Netherlands, adopted a call for reform of the 1951 Convention this summer as an election loomed.<\/p>\n

It went on to win that election, and the position is likely to be part of the governing programme of the next Dutch coalition government, a major shift for a country that sees itself as the home of international law.<\/p>\n

The head of Greece\u2019s asylum system, Marios Kaleas, made a public call for a revision of the Refugee Convention in October, calling it \u201can obstacle to the implementation of the national policy of European states\u201d and counter to their \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ireland was among 27 countries to call for changes to the ECHR in December in order to ease deportations, an initiative that had been spearheaded by hardline governments in Denmark and Italy before winning broad backing.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Why has Ireland abruptly decided the European Convention on Human Rights goes too far?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The move was described as a \u201cseismic shift\u201d in Irish policy, as previous governments were staunch defenders of the convention, which was used for landmark rights cases in Northern Ireland and had been considered fundamental to the Belfast Agreement.<\/p>\n

Central to the push for changes to the law in Europe is the desire to move parts of the asylum process offshore by setting up refugee processing centres or \u201creturn hubs\u201d for rejected applicants.<\/p>\n

The idea has enduring appeal for western governments, but has repeatedly foundered due to the difficulty of finding willing host states, and the potential clash with the rule that refugees cannot be returned to a place of danger.<\/p>\n

In an address to the UN General Assembly in New York in September, US president Donald Trump appeared to attack the concept of refugees in itself, characterising the UN support system for displaced people as financing and creating an \u201cinvasion\u201d of the US.<\/p>\n

On the sidelines, Washington officials held an event calling for an overhaul of the global asylum system to make refugee status temporary rather than permanent, to make it obligatory for all countries to take back their nationals if they are deported, and to remove the possibility of refugees choosing their country of destination.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump characterised the UN support system for displaced people as financing and creating an \u201cinvasion\u201d of the US. Photograph: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

There are signs the shift is bipartisan. The Migration Policy Institute, a US think tank seen as close to the Democratic Party, recently published a call for the Refugee Convention to be updated with a new protocol, like the one that extended it in 1967.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has long been taboo to suggest that the Convention should be reformed, for fear of what would be lost,\u201d Susan Fratzke and Meghan Benton wrote in the analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut calls from states, particularly donor and destination-country ones, to address gaps left by the original text have become more difficult to ignore, particularly as some governments have chosen to openly flout Convention obligations in lieu of advancing reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

They added that any international agreement would be very challenging to pass, and would require western countries to \u201clisten to and incorporate the concerns of the rest of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

This nods to a major obstacle to agreeing any new text: the diverging interests of wealthier and poorer countries, which already receive 70 per cent of refugees and are likely to seek significant financial support if western countries want them to take more.<\/p>\n

UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi recently told a London audience that Chad had received over twice as many asylum seekers as the UK over the same 12 month period, with a fraction of the resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody would be forgiven \u2013 based on what we hear and read in the news \u2013 for thinking that most of the countries that receive refugees are in Europe, or in North America,\u201d Grandi said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0European court stance limits Ireland\u2019s ability to deport criminals, O\u2019Callaghan saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"AnAn inflatable dinghy carrying migrants across the English Channel in 2024. Photograpoh: Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

In the past, western countries may have held back from calling for changes to the Refugee Convention because the observance of the treaty by poorer countries reduces the number of asylum claims they receive, according to Capicchiano Young.<\/p>\n

She sees the push for changes to international law as being led by countries that are already breaching it in practice, and are seeking to \u201cformalise\u201d their existing policies.<\/p>\n

If it were the Geneva Convention being discussed, \u201cit would be absolutely shocking to publicly call for the moving of the goalposts to adjust international law to the violations being committed by states,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s precisely what\u2019s happening in international refugee law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was the year a taboo broke against seeking changes to human rights treaties considered pillars of international…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,382,23937,2219,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,1294,107,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-259577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-denmark","11":"tag-european-convention-of-human-rights-echr","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115813456534275932","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}