ABSTRACT
This article looks back to the 1920s, and tries to tease out the politics of refugee protection as it evolved in the practice of States and international organizations in a period of growing ideological divide. The question addressed is whether the politics of protection at any particular moment are humanitarian or whether they serve primarily other purposes, in which the refugee is merely instrumental. It is unrealistic to imagine that the problem of refugees can ever be entirely non-political. What the history of the 1920–55 period confirms is the continued vitality of self-interest as a motivating factor in the responses of States to refugee flows. The international refugee regime that emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s defined refugees through the politics of denunciation in a persecution-oriented definition that continues to limit and confuse, not only at the international operations level, but also in national asylum procedures. In this context, the article concludes that the art for UNHCR is not to allow solutions or assistance to have priority over protection. For if it cannot provide protection, it will be judged a failure and accountable, and not merely excused because it tried hard in difficult political circumstances.
