The 1951 Refugee Convention: Still Fit for Purpose? Event

The United Nations’ Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951, is an important element of a group of post-war human rights initiatives that accompanied the 1948 Declaration of Universal Rights. This talk will explore the background to the Convention itself and how it defined refugees. With some arguing that it should be scrapped and others that it needs expanding in scope, I will ask whether it is still fit for purpose at a time when the number of refugees and displaced in the world has never been greater.

Please note that this event is in-person only.

About the Speaker

Tony Kushner is Professor in the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations and History Department at the University of Southampton. He has written widely on the British Jewish experience, especially social history and comparative migration and on the Holocaust. His most recent books are The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys since 1685 (Manchester University Press, 2012), Journeys from the Abyss: The Holocaust and Forced Migration from the 1880s to the Present (Liverpool University Press, 2017) and Southampton’s Migrant Past and Present (Parkes Institute, 2021). He has recently finished a study of an eighteenth century Jewish triple murderer and, with Dr Aimee Bunting, is working on a joint book, Co-Presents to the Holocaust. He is co-editor of the journal Patterns of Prejudice and deputy editor of Jewish Culture and History.