Contesting the Universality of the Refugee Convention: Decolonization and the Additional Protocol

Abstract

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.