The humanity experiences the most serious refugee problem since the Second World War. Despite the nature of the problem, states’ policies on refugee problem are far away from protecting refugees and from providing responsibility sharing mechanism, being contrary to the aims of 1951 Convention. 5 states alone host 83% of the world’s refugees, 9 out of 10 refugees are in developing states and not even 1% of the refugees could have access to durable solutions such as third country resettlement and local integration. While existing literature mainly focuses on the reasons of this crisis, this study questions how state parties can still shape their policies on refugee problem according to their behaviors, will and interests despite the existence of an international regime and a binding agreement. The study seeks to answer this question by examining 1951 Convention in terms of refugee definition, international protection and responsibility sharing. The study argues that the Convention with its structure of vague and relative statements facilitates current crisis by enabling states to shape their policies on refugee problem according to political realities. © 2016, Forsnet. All rights reserved.

1951 Convention Responsibility Sharing International Refugee Regime International protection Refugee

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