The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

and Chaldean refugees and by 1924 the documents were accepted by more than fifty
governments. 14
The Commission centrale pour l’étude de la condition des réfugiés russes et
arménians attempted to codify the rights of these refugees through international
agreements but it was not until 1928 that the “Arrangement on Russian and Armenian
Refugees” was adopted. This document allowed nations to grant non-statutory consent
conceding the refugees the right to work, access to the judicial system and protection
from deportation. 15 The 1933 Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees
expanded the terms and scope of the 1928 agreement to include social welfare, education,
and labor conditions. 16
The Great Depression, with its mass unemployment among native workers,
created domestic hostility towards foreign laborers. Consequently, the host nations
adopted policies of restriction, limitation of privileges and refoulement. 17 Critically, the
14 “Circular Letter from the League of Nations Secretary-General August 14, 1928, Official Journal
(1929): 323. The White Russians fleeing the Soviet takeover were granted by the League of Nations a
special form of papers: the Nansen passport, named after Fridtjof Nansen. Nansen was appointed League
High Commissioner for Refugees in 1922. This passport was granted to other stateless refugees and was
recognized by 52 nations. Approximately 450,000 had been granted.
15 James Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 86.
16 Article 3 of the Convention pledged each signatory power “not to remove or keep from its territory
by application of police measures, such as expulsion or non-admittance at the frontier (refoulement),
refugees who have been authorized to reside there regularly,” unless they represented a threat to “national
security or public order.” Refugees must not be denied entry “at the frontier of their countries of origin.”
The “Contracting Parties” retained the right to utilize necessary “internal measures” for those refugees
“expelled for reasons of national security or public order [who] are unable to leave its territory” or lack the
necessary papers or official permission to relocate in another country. Nine nations, including the United
Kingdom and France ratified the agreement but Britain disavowed the right to deny entry at the border.
Gilbert Jaeger, “On the History of the International Protection of Refugees,” International Review of the
Red Cross (IRRC) 83, no. 843 (September 2001): 727-736.
17 Hathaway. The Rights of Refugees, 88.
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