ABSTRACT
The 1951 Refugee Convention1 is a product of the Cold War. Drafted to deal with those displaced by the Nazi ravages, it was at the same time an ideological instrument of the West against the Warsaw bloc. Eurocentric in conception, it was therefore premised on ‘peacetime persecution’ by oppressive regimes as they were then known (Sztucki, 1999: 57). The Convention definition of a refugee is based on the idea that an organised state persecutes in a discriminatory manner a group of the population that seeks subsidiary protection abroad.
