Refugee Convention: UNHCR

Refugees In Canada Dept: At the conference, Jason Kenney, Canada's minister of citizenship and immigration, announced that Canada would resettle slightly more refugees in the future. While this news is welcome, the numbers involved are far too small to meaningfully address the fundamental imbalance in the distribution of refugees between rich and poor countries. Nor can opening the door a crack wider for refugee resettlement make up for policies that would violate the rights of refugees in Canada to whom we have legal obligations under the Refugee Convention, according to Montreal Gazette. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines who qualifies as a refugee and spells out the rights and obligations of host countries and refugees. The convention has enabled the UNHCR to help millions of uprooted people restart their lives. It remains the cornerstone of refugee protection, but it faces unprecedented challenges and the recent Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ministerial meeting was the largest conference on refugees and stateless people in its history. The UNHCR sought to recommit and re-engage the support of member states for key legal treaties, including the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. A major additional question was whether industrialized countries would address a deep imbalance in international support for the world's forcibly displaced. The government of Canada is making changes to our refugee-determination system that deprive asylumseekers a fair hearing. It often portrays them as criminals and queue-jumpers. It has introduced a bill that it says is aimed at deterring smugglers, but that mostly targets refugees. Let us look at the reasons why these measures must be reconsidered. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.