Refugee Convention turns 75 as UN warns on asylum

The Refugee Convention marked its 75th anniversary on Tuesday as the United Nations warned that the right to asylum is under increasing political pressure.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih spoke at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where the convention was opened for signature on July 28, 1951. He urged governments to move from managing displacement to resolving it.

Salih said debates about refugees and asylum were becoming increasingly politicised. He said people forced to flee were too often made scapegoats for wider social, economic and political anxieties and portrayed as burdens or threats.

UNHCR said 117.8 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced from their homes at the end of 2025, down from a record 123.2 million in 2024. The agency said the decline was the first in a decade. It said 35.6 million of the displaced people were refugees under UNHCR's mandate, with two-thirds from Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan.

Salih said he would visit Syria next week. He said millions might not have fled towards neighbouring countries and Europe if the world had acted sooner to end Syria's 2011-2024 civil war.

Syrian refugee swimmer Yusra Mardini, who fled Syria before competing at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics, told the event she had returned to Syria for the first time a few months earlier. She said she saw families crossing back into the country to find homes, schools, roads and hospitals destroyed.

Mardini is among the initial 75 signatories of the Promise initiative, which reaffirms the right of persecuted people to seek safety in other countries. Other signatories include Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, Ben Stiller, Malala Yousafzai and Nadia Murad.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the convention had saved millions of lives, but warned that its promise was under strain as conflicts multiply, persecution persists and the right to seek asylum is questioned, restricted or denied.

UNHCR is also facing financial pressure. The agency said its funding was cut by around 35 percent last year and that it shed nearly 5,000 jobs in 2025, more than a quarter of its workforce. Salih said the cuts had affected UNHCR's ability to deliver assistance and said the agency needed more support.