The 1951 UN Refugee Convention: its origins and significance
10-Minute Talks
English - July 28, 2021 12:00 - 11 minutes - 10.6 MBSociety & Culture Arts history politics philosophy economics history of art psychology sociology law humanities social sciences Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this talk, Peter Gatrell discusses the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, signed in Geneva on 28 July 1951. He explains the circumstances leading up to the Refugee Convention and considers what it was designed to achieve: a commitment to recognise and protect refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution. At present, although many of the world’s refugees live in non-signatory states, the Refugee Convention remains a crucial element of international refugee law.
His latest book is The Unsettling of Europe: the Great Migration, 1945 to the Present (Penguin, 2021). Details of his current collaborative research project, "Reckoning with refugeedom: refugee voices in modern history, 1919-75" are also available.
Speaker: Professor Peter Gatrell FBA, Professor of Economic History, University of Manchester
Image: New Temporary Refugee Camp In Lesbos Island. © Photo by Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto via Getty Images