The Shortcomings Of The Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees

1 Introduction
To address the consequences regarding refugees after World War Two (“WWII”), the United Nations (“UN”) adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Today, some 62 years since the Convention was entered into force, the issues regarding refugees remains.
These issues are still regulated by the Convention. However, that these provisions remain relevant to the regulation of current refugee issues is a contentious issue. One of the reasons for this is that the definition of “refugee” as set out in Article 1 of the Convention drastically limits the scope of persons qualifying for refugee status. Vast amounts of individuals who deserve assistance do not receive it due to this. Some of the problematic aspects to the
More specifically it is limited to the shortcomings of Article 1 of the Refugee Convention, which sets out the definition for “refugee”. The shortcomings that will be analysed are the ones of exclusion of certain other groups of persons who are in dire need of assistance but due to the narrowness of the definition does not fall in the definition and subsequently is not classified as refugees and does not receive the assistance they deserve. The specific elements of the definition there will be looked at is the restrictive requirements to be classified as a refugee. These requirements are the ones of “persecution” and the “for reasons of” requirements. Thus there will not be looked at all the problematic elements of the definition of
Today there are refugees who have to flee their countries due to “environmental deterioration”, known as “environmental refugees”. These refugees are not protected by the Convention since the definition of “refugee” is very narrow and strict. According to Jessica Cooper host countries will not be able to avoid these refugees and the effects of them for very long.
The Convention is based on various human rights notions thus it is understandable that the recognized grounds for persecution are fundamental human rights and it disallows discrimination. There can however be argued that these environmental refugees are excluded from the definition in the Convention and subsequently discriminated against. These individuals flee because of resources running out and thus they cannot sustain themselves. This should be a right that should be protected in the Convention as