Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Refugees have been a substantial problem in international relations for well over a hundred years. States have generally been united in a common understanding that refugees, as people persecuted primarily by their own state, should be given a right to leave. The international response, however, has still varied considerably. This paper examines the League of Nations? and United Nations? response to the refugee problem, and suggests that these responses indicate the existence of two dramatically different regimes held together by different norms. In particular, it was only after the establishment of the United Nations that states began to regard the refugee problem as long-term, global in scale, as well as that refugees should possess the right of non-refoulment ? the right not to be sent back to a persecuting home state. In contrast, the League of Nations dealt with refugees on a case by case basis, assumed the problem was short term and resolvable, and, most alarmingly accepted no right of non-refoulment. In fact, forced return was common, such as in the case of the German Jews. This comparison points to two conclusions with intriguing implications for the study of refugees and the literature on norm change. First, regimes, even if ineffective, will generally collapse only during a crisis, such as the outbreak of World War II. Second, and unexpectedly, there may also be a period of contestation prior to the emergence of a new regime, during which states default to norms which have already failed.