Refugee World(S): a 20th Century Retrospective - Peter Gatrell

In Protected content Sadruddin Aga Khan, the high commissioner of UNHCR, the UN Office for Refugees, declared to the UN General Assembly: 'The facts point to the existence of what is, virtually, a Fourth World. A world without representation in this or any other Assembly, yet peopled by millions: refugees, the displaced and often stateless, and others in similar circumstances'.

In this lecture Peter Gatrell will suggest that we can write refugees into modern global history only by taking account of other worlds as well. It may be legitimate to think of the 'refugee world' as a distinct realm of being but it is more appropriate to consider refugees’ encounters with refugee-creating and refugee-hosting (and refugee-deterring) states and with the range of organisations charged with their protection and assistance.

UNHCR was the dominant intergovernmental organisation in what has come to be called the international refugee regime, they determined who was and who was not 'eligible'. At the same time, the numerous case files assembled and preserved by UNHCR disclose the hopes, aspirations and rights claims of displaced people from many different parts of the world whether or not they were recognised under international refugee law.