September 22, 2025 Dear Colleague, While the 1951 Refugee Convention has been a remarkable achievement — saving millions of lives and enshrining the core principle that people seeking protection cannot be returned to harm — the nearly 75-year-old legal instrument is creaking under the weight of today’s realities. Pandora’s box has been opened with the public suggestion by the United States and more quiet murmurings by other governments that they are contemplating revising or withdrawing from the Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol. While it has long been taboo to suggest that the Convention should be reformed, for fear of what would be lost, calls to address gaps left by the original text have become more difficult to ignore, particularly as some governments have chosen to openly flout Convention obligations in lieu of advancing reforms. A new Migration Policy Institute (MPI) short read makes the case for mending, not ending, the Convention through the adoption of a carefully negotiated new Protocol that could advance targeted reforms to address several gaps, including: - Establishing a set of rules around onward movement from first safe countries of asylum.
- Agreeing to a mechanism for quickly meeting needs and sharing responsibility in situations of mass displacement.
- Improving financial burden-sharing to compensate major hosting states and enable refugee self-sufficiency.
“Reforming the international protection system should be done with a scalpel, not a chain saw,” MPI analysts Susan Fratzke and Meghan Benton write. “The Refugee Convention’s core principles remain indispensable; the task now is to adapt their application to modern realities without undermining their moral force.” They also note that while the loudest voices for changes to the Convention have come from high-income destination states, serious reform will require incorporating the concerns of the rest of the world. Read this important new short read here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/mending-not-ending-refugee-convention. Sincerely,  Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Migration Policy Institute | 
