Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (University of Copenhagen - iCourts - Centre of Excellence for International Courts) has posted Legal Evolution and the 1951 Refugee Convention (International Migration, Vol. 59, 2021) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Refugee protection represents what might be termed an ‘orphan issue’ in international law today. By that, I mean an issue area where dedicated adjudicatory or supervisory mechanisms at the international level have never emerged and where the authors of international law, states, may be argued to have wholly or partially lost their support for the existing normative content. Nonetheless, the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees itself has proven surprisingly robust, weathering not only recent but also past decades’ significant crises and political transitions. This does not mean that it has remained a static instrument, however. Throughout the decades, our understanding and interpretation of core provisions in the 1951 Convention have undergone significant developments across most jurisdictions. In this article I outline three possible explanations for why progressive interpretation of the 1951 Convention may persist even during periods of waning state support and in the absence of an international court or monitoring body on par with other human rights treaties.
