Given that wars are often fought over territorial matters, it’s perhaps no surprise that their aftermath has seen not only changes in borders, but also largescale displacement of people. They’re often accompanied by changes in international laws that have both intended and unintended consequences on the way people can move between countries.
Indeed, research from West Virginia University highlights how these policies and laws have an enduring impact today. The researchers trawl back through some 100 years of international laws that, they believe, help to describe why there is such a hostile climate for refugees today.
They naturally begin their journey at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but continue through the creation of institutions such as the League of Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This journey describes a period in which migration has become steadily harder and harder. Indeed, precious few obstacles existed to migration before World War 1.
“There was a lot less hindrance then,” the researchers say. “The idea of the refugee doesn’t exist in the way we understand it today without a state boundary to cross.”
Erecting boundaries
In the aftermath of World War 1, the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman empires collapsed, leading to a plethora of new countries emerging and a fundamental restructuring of the world’s borders. The researchers describe how the number of countries almost doubled after the war.
This led indelibly on to the refugee laws that emerged after World War II, both in terms of the legal definition of a refugee, and how such individuals should be regarded.
“Ideas about the nation-state which arise at this time are fundamentally connected to how we think about displacement and forced displacement,” the researchers say. “Without nation-state boundaries, you wouldn’t necessarily have the need to regulate mobility in the same way.”
The League of Nations, which was created in 1920, was the first institution tasked with managing and supporting refugees, and it was the first time the international community created a sense of obligation to intervene and help where they could.
Limited impact
The League only had a limited impact however as they only focused on particular situations and particular populations. For instance, their efforts mainly revolved around people who had been forced from their homeland due to war and/or persecution.
“The League’s definition of refugee was tied to specific situations and people who had been forcibly displaced,” the researchers say. “At this time, there wasn’t an attempt to define refugee status according to a universal threshold that would apply despite one’s ethnicity or nationality.”
This definition didn’t come about until the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after WW2, which were in large part catalyzed by the horrors of the Holocaust. The initiative aimed to provide a baseline of rights for every person on earth, and this was then expanded to include the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees.
“Both of these moments sought to create a universal definition of who is a refugee and who can seek asylum,” the researchers explain. “While states have sovereign control over their territories and the populations that reside in their territory, there is a special class of people who, when they are forced to cross a border, have protections articulated in international law that all states are obligated to respect. It’s a check on the expression of state sovereignty and the power and abuses that can accompany that.”
All of these historical moments have had a profound impact on border and refugee policies today. Both the direct closure of borders themselves and the policies that hinder, deter and exclude refugees are all tacit violations of the morals and norms outlined in the original laws.
“In some ways, it really makes me stop and reflect on why we even have international law,” the researchers ponder. “What is the value of it? It sets precedent, goals and ideals to aspire to, overachieve or even fail.”
