Governments around the world, and especially the US and countries in Europe, are increasingly undermining global refugee conventions and protections, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. 

The warning came on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, a 1951 document that sets out what constitutes a refugee and outlines the responsibilities of countries hosting them. 

The UNHCR says countries have increasingly moved to suspend applications for asylum and requests for international protection by those who claim to be in danger because of war; or who face persecution for their religion, race, nationality, sexuality or for their political beliefs if they were to return to their home country. 

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Ruvendrini Menikdiwela said the issue was getting worse. 

“I am not exaggerating when I say that the institution of the asylum worldwide is under more threat now than it has ever been,” Ms Menikdiwela told media in Geneva.

In the US, the Trump administration and some European nations have increasingly restricted asylum and sought bilateral deals with third countries, especially in Africa, to deport migrants. 

“Some of those agreements are actually being concluded even as we speak. Asylum is under threat, but it is more under threat in the countries that are more capable of bearing that responsibility than in the countries which are actually hosting the largest number of refugees,” Ms Menikdiwela said.” 

Greece, which has seen a surge in refugees arriving on the island of Crete, including many Sudanese nationals, have suspended asylum processing. 

Talking about the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees adopted in the wake of World War II and the later 1967 Refugee Protocol, which expanded protections to refugees worldwide, Ms Menikdiwela said the two documents had “saved millions of lives in the past and will save millions of lives in the future”. 

A global funding crisis in the humanitarian sector has impacted more than 122 million people displaced from their homes, fleeing conflict or persecution, authorities say. A growing anti-asylum and anti-migration sentiment has added to their woes. 

“Although the arrivals of refugees in the Global North dominate the headlines, three quarters of the world’s 43 million plus refugees are actually being hosted in low-income and middle-income countries,” Ms Menikdiwela said. 

She cited the example of Chad, an East African nation that hosts 1.5 million refugees, the vast majority of them Sudanese who fled an ongoing civil war. 

“There are people – men, women and children – wandering around with bullet wounds and shrapnel wounds. Women and girls in particular have been subjected to unprecedented levels of sexual violence,” Ms Menikdiwela said. 

She said that the refugees who she met in Chad would not be alive if Chad hadn’t respected the refugee convention and allowed them across its borders. 

Ms Menikdiwela urged leaders to step up donations and support, saying that many of the refugees in Chad would continue to move north through Libya and eventually Europe if their needs weren’t met in the East African nation. 

But she did acknowledge the asylum system was being abused by migrants who have moved for economic or other reasons, not because they were fleeing war or persecution.’ 

UNHCR has supported the idea of return hubs, a polite term for deportation centres, which are increasingly gaining support in the US and Europe.