This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the legal backbone of refugee protection worldwide.  The anniversary comes amid an onslaught of harmful policy changes affecting those who seek refuge.  The United States helped build this system of humanitarian protection. But the United States is now leading its dilution.

The U.S. Made the Refugee System Global. Now We Are Testing Its Limits.

When the United States ratified the 1967 Protocol to the convention, we made a deliberate choice to universalize the international system’s commitments to refugees in the wake of World War II. We affirmed that protection should not depend on one’s geographic location or the year someone fled—that this system should endure across space and time and across disparate displacement contexts and crises.

Congress cemented that commitment into federal law with the Refugee Act of 1980, which aligned U.S. law with international standards and created a resettlement program that became the envy of the world.

That leadership saved lives. It saved Burmese refugees who fled acts of genocide. It saved Sudanese families who escaped Darfur. It saved Syrian refugees who survived barrel bombs in Aleppo. It saved Congolese children who spent years in camps. It saved people fleeing religious persecution, from Soviet Jews to Yazidi families, who found safety here when their faith made them targets.

These stories are not exceptions. They are the American refugee story. They are living proof that our commitments mattered and still matter.

Anniversaries force hard questions. The hardest one right now is simple: are we still living up to the commitments we made?

The Global Crisis Is Escalating. The U.S. Is Betraying Its Values.

We are living through the largest displacement crisis ever recorded. Yet the U.S. refugee system is operating with outdated infrastructure, inconsistent policies, and chronic underinvestment.

The refugee program is meant to respond to forced displacement worldwide—to support the responsibilities and leadership undertaken by host countries across the globe, from Colombia to Jordan, Bangladesh to Uganda.

Yet the current U.S. refugee program has only welcomed one nationality—South Africans—this fiscal year. Thousands of previously approved refugee cases remain in limbo with no path to the United States as the indefinite suspension of the program continues. Lawfully arrived refugees have been subject to reinterviews and detention. U.S. officials have gone to the United Nations to question the very tenets of refugee protection.

This Anniversary Demands Action, Not Reflection.

If Americans want to honor the Convention’s legacy and our own we need to act with urgency, not complacency. We need to demand policies that protect those in need, wherever they may be, and insist on a government that upholds its commitments to its people, its allies, and those it swore to protect.

We are urging U.S. Policymakers to: 

• Recommit to the Refugee Act of 1980 as the domestic expression of our international obligations and our nation’s values.
• Rebuild a robust and predictable U.S. Refugee Admissions Program that meets today’s global realities with ambitious goals and the resources and infrastructure to achieve those goals.
• Expand and strengthen access to resettlement for populations in danger, including Burmese, Afghans, Sudanese, Congolese, and others whose safety depends on U.S. leadership.
• Protect family unity with progress on follow-to-join cases for family members reuniting with their loved ones.
• Ensure geopolitical rhetoric meets reality with resettlement commitments to persecuted groups, such as Uyghurs from western China or Christians in Nigeria.
• Protect people fleeing religious persecution, consistent with commitments that have defined American identity since our earliest history.
• Ensure that border and enforcement policies do not harm refugee and immigrant children, families, or communities.

The Convention Still Matters Because U.S. Leadership Still Matters.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol endure because countries like the United States committed to refugee protection. When we lead, the system holds. When we abandon our principles, the system falters.

Seventy-five years later, the question is not whether the Convention is still relevant. The question is whether the United States will choose again to stand behind the commitments that define us.

This anniversary is a reminder. Our leadership is not guaranteed; it is a choice. And it is one we need to make now. 

View our Action Alert here.