Definitions
World War II still exerts a great influence on definitions and explanations of forced migration. The policy makers who established the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1951 believed that forced migration was caused by extreme nationalism, which led to wars that pushed people from one country to another. The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, therefore, defined a refugee as a person “outside the country of his nationality” due to “a well-founded fear of persecution” (UNHCR 2000). Its most important guarantee of protection is that refugees may not be forcibly returned to the country from which they fled – non-refoulement. But the 1951 Convention only covered refugees from events that occurred in Europe before January 1, 1951. At the time, 58 % of the world’s refugees resided there. Once they were taken care of, policy makers assumed that forced migration would not be a problem because the new international system expressed in...
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Hein, J., Niazi, T. (2015). Forced Migration: Global Trends and Explanations. In: Bean, F., Brown, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Migration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_108-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6179-7_108-1
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