Contesting the Universality of the Refugee Convention: Decolonization and the Additional Protocol.

This article examines the adoption of the 1967 Additional Protocol to the 1951 United Nations (UN) Refugee Convention within the broader context of post-World War II international order transformations and decolonization. It argues that the Protocol was largely a strategic response by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to institutional anxieties about the Convention’s limited geographic and temporal scope and the emergence of competing regional refugee frameworks, notably those developed by newly independent African and Asian states through the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee (AALCC). These regional initiatives sought to expand refugee definitions and address practical political concerns neglected by the original Convention, reflecting efforts by postcolonial states to assert their sovereignty and influence in an exclusionary international system. While the Additional Protocol removed key restrictions to promote universality and helped increase global participation in the refugee regime, the article highlights ongoing tensions between claims to universal refugee protection and the hegemonic maintenance of established international norms, revealing the limits of decolonization’s impact on global refugee governance.