Africa/Global: Amnesty International refugees feature: A dream of protection turned into nightmare

As long as people's human rights are being violated, the world will have a "refugee problem". And whenever there is a refugee problem, the people who will suffer the most are the refugees themselves. Those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized this in 1948, as did those who drafted the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention. The right to seek asylum from persecution, as well as the right not to be sent back to your persecutors, were both given a central place in the human rights framework that evolved after the horrors of the Second World War. Yet, in the early 21st century, more than fifty years since the adoption of the 1951 Convention, do states care about refugee protection? Do people care?