ABSTRACT
The asylum seekers are not new after all, but neither were they in 1986; on the contrary, they had always been there, certainly since that day in July 1951 when States imagined that they could confine the refugee definition by reference to time and space. The UNHCR Executive Committee first called for ‘at least temporary refuge’ in cases of large-scale influx in 1979. Australia followed up and called for an expert group to consider all aspects of this issue in 1980, and in 1981 the Executive Committee adopted its seminal conclusion on the protection of asylum seekers in situations of large-scale influx. Temporary refuge does not fit the Roberts model precisely, for there is indeed a considerable amount of relevant State practice, but it gains considerably from her analysis of the importance, from an opinio juris perspective, of declarations, resolutions, statements by competent international organisations, and acquiescence in the protection activities of UNHCR.
