World Revolution – Global Action – 10 December 2011 – Human Rights
Universalism for the Happy Few?
One of the main features of the “human rights revolution” was its strong universalist outlook. From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “supremacy of human rights everywhere” (1941) to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human rights proclaimed “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations,” universalist rhetoric colored the human rights talk of the decade.
That this resuscitation of eighteenth-century natural rights was performed while Southern segregation and European colonialism were still solidly entrenched has been pointed out countless times, not the least by participants in the Civil Rights and anti-colonial movements. The contradictions of human rights universalism, however, were also refl ected in the world of European mass displacement. The answer to the fundamental question “Who is a Refugee?” was grounded in the specifi c context of postwar Europe; yet it was ultimately couched in strong universal language in the 1951 Geneva Convention, a bill of rights for political refugees that crystallized in international law the main legacies of the DP experience. In this document, stillgoverning the attribution of refugee status today, a refugee is broadly defined
as “any person … outside his country of origin” with a “well-founded fear of persecution.” In 1951, however, the universal language of the Geneva Convention was strongly curtailed by historical and geographical limitations inherited from the DP years: In order to seek a compromise and prompt ratification, delegates at Geneva decided that only “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951” should be considered for the future recognition of political refugees. 1 A few years after the Second World War and in the midst of the Cold War, the shadow of Hitler and Stalin signifi cantly weighed upon “universal” perceptions of political persecution.
The universal impulse of international human rights was also cut short by the rigorous selection of DPs. A French international jurist compared this policy to “picking and choosing.” The West, argued Roger Nathan-Chapotot in 1949, was now “fishing chosen individuals among masses of refugees and displaced persons. This fi shnet bears the name Allies-United Nations.” 2 In postwar Europe, international humanitarianism did not encompass all the DPs and refugees who viewed themselves as such. The policy of UNRRA and the IRO, for instance, was to not include ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe, even the very few who sought DP status instead of reintegration in West Germany: Refugees with German-sounding family names were particularly scrutinized in the interview process. Similarly, applicants suspected of collaboration with Nazi Germany were prevented admission into the DP community. Ukrainians and Baltic states’ nationals were especially targeted, despite their arguing, and at times proving, that their occasional enrollment in the Wehrmacht was coerced. This “atmosphere of perpetual screening” elicited bitterness and resentment. “Such screenings,” lamented American advocatesof Ukrainian refugees, “bring real terror to displaced persons.” 3 Other observers of refugee hearings in the camps noted that “each and every question sets a trap.” 4 Clearly, the selection of DPs reproduced the norms of the victors’ justice: “How many DPs,” worried an IRO offi cial, “sought a shelter in our camps, merely to hide and escape retribution at home?” 5
The idea that refugees could now be divided between “true” and “false” – a dichotomy that would have made little sense for interwar humanitariansclinging to the collective approach – was reinforced with the arrival in Germany of the fi rst anticommunist dissidents following the 1948 Prague coup. Here the potential intruders were the “economic adventurers” seeking to emigrate to the West (preferably North America) under the disguise of political dissidence. The IRO swiftly adapted its methods to this new reality: “If a refugee comes from Eastern Europe, he is required to prove that the abandonment of his country of origin was forced upon him by the fear of racial, religious or political persecution.” Political refugees, in short, were not ordinary migrants. One important feature of contemporary political asylum was being created in the DP camps of occupied Germany: the obligation for asylum seekers to bear the burden of proof in their claim of political persecution. Opposition to a regime had to be evidenced by religious or political persecution, or “by proven membership to a political party …known to be the subject of persecution.” 9 In the IRO archives, many personal cases illustrate the process through which “true” political and “false” economic refugees were sorted out. A young Czech waiter, for example, said that he escaped to Germany “because his father, during a birthday celebration, expressed anticommunist sentiments and was denounced. Two days later, he was informed that the police had sought him and fl ed to Germany.” His story was not considered convincing, primarily because he made the unfortunate mistake to admit “that his salary of 600 Kcs was insuffi cient for his needs.” 11
These practices of exclusion, justifi ed by a pervasive worry to provide DP status to “bona fi de applicants” only, should not be overstated. Refugees turned down by the IRO – less than 20 percent overall – were not forcibly returned to their countries but simply left to fend for themselves or handed over to West German welfare organizations. In the case of anti-communist dissidents, the qualms of UN agencies and NGOs about “false refugees” soon became irrelevant when the United States tailored its immigration policies to receive a large number of “escapees” from the Soviet bloc. If anything, the exclusion of certain categories of refugees was a reminder that in the modern era, political asylum is not a guaranteed human right, but merely “a right to have rights” (to use Hannah Arendt’s famous formulation). The Universal Declaration framed only “the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” (art. 14), not the right to be automatically granted asylum. By considering the claims of all applicants to DP status and ensuring due process (including the possibility for DPs to appeal negative decisions), the international civil servants in charge of the postwar refugee question in Europe were faithful to this agenda. In one area, however, the management of displacement did go beyond the scope of contemporary human rights standards: the tacit recognition of self-determination as a human right for Jewish victims of genocide.
1. United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 28 July 1951. The wording “in Europe or elsewhere” was offered as an option to the signatories, but was eventually rejected by the overwhelming majority of contracting states. The temporal and geographical limitations were eventually lifted from the Convention in 1967.
2. Roger Nathan-Chapotot, Les Nations-Unies et les réfugiés. Le maintien de la paix et le conflit des qualifi cations entre l’Ouest et l’Est (Paris, 1949).
3. Walter Dushnyck and William J. Gibbons, Refugees Are People. The Plight of Europe’s Displaced Persons (New York, 1947).
4. Léon Richard, “Le problème peut-il être résolu?” in Chemins du Monde. Personnes Déplacées (Paris, 1948), 338.
5. René Ristelhueber, Au secours des réfugiés. L’oeuvre de l’Organisation Internationale des Réfugiés (Paris, 1951), 141. 41 National Archives (Paris), IRO Records (Paris, Archives Nationales), AJ43/141.
6. Ibid., Case 15 723.
