Since last year more than a million people seeking asylum have arrived in Europe by land and sea. Until recently, every week nearly ten thousand people were reaching the Greek islands. The media frames this situation as a “migrant crisis”. Yet, can it really be characterized as a 'crisis'? If so, is it a global crisis, and can the 1951 Refugee Convention provide a real solution?
Labeling the problem as a crisis enables states to resort to measures that they would only utilize under exceptional circumstances. This discourse creates its own reprehensible consequences, leaving asylum-seekers trapped in countries where they do not find effective protection. European countries, in trying to keep the problem outside the border of “Fortress Europe”, are an example of this situation. The fact that one third of the refugee population in the world is hosted by a small number of countries, makes the ‘crisis’ somewhat regional rather than global.
When we look back to the 1950s, we see the adoption of an international mechanism, the Refugee Convention, which was intended to welcome people fleeing communist Eastern Europe. It was originally designed to be flexible enough to serve the interests of western powers. After World War II, convention refugees were also seen as laborers along with other migrants needed to meet the labour demands of western states. Although this was a period—in the aftermath of war—when human rights principles were being proclaimed, the international community did not adopt a universal norm that recognized the right to be granted asylum.
