We are at a critical juncture in the development and application of international refugee law. On the one hand, the continued relevance of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol has come under doubt, and political and scholarly debates about ‘the end’ of the global refugee protection regime are ongoing. On the other hand, major refugee-hosting countries in several regions of the world are not parties to the Convention and Protocol, leading mainstream scholarship and practice to often view them or their regions as an ‘exception’ to international refugee law.

The BEYOND project at the University of Oslo seeks to challenge these rhetorics by asking: How does the Refugee Convention impact on and inform the relevant laws and practices of non-signatory states? To what extent and how do non-signatory states engage with international refugee law, and how and what do these states contribute to that body of law? Drawing on these questions, the talk will present tentative findings from the BEYOND project to make the argument that the Refugee Convention not only continues to be relevant, but that it also plays important roles in shaping responses to refugees in many non-signatory states.