In 2017, United States President Trump said of refugees: “I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad,” leaving no doubt about his disdain for the 40 million people around the world who have been forced to leave their own country and seek asylum elsewhere because of persecution, human rights violations and armed conflict.
Most recently, after the shooting of two members of the West Virginia National Guard by an Afghan national, in which one member later died from wounds, Trump, now in his second presidential term, announced that he would “permanently pause migration from all third world countries.”
“This refugee burden,” he said, “is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America. . . .”
Turning his loathing of refugees more vehemently into government policy and practice since taking office for a second time, in January 2025, Trump introduced an indefinite ban on refugee resettlement to the US and removed the temporary protected status previously granted to citizens of unstable countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Myanmar, Somalia and Syria. At the same time, the administration has militarized much of the country’s border with Mexico, turning away asylum seekers and other migrants who are trying to enter the US.
In his second presidency, Trump has set his administration on a wider, even more ambitious objective: to dismantle the global asylum system that has been carefully constructed over the past 75 years.
After World War II, there was widespread recognition of the need to avoid a repetition of events during the Holocaust, when Jews and members of other minority groups were prevented from entering other countries and in some instances returned to their death in Germany. At the time, millions of people displaced by the war in Europe had to be found new homes, while new refugee movements were beginning because of Soviet repression in the eastern part of the continent.
It was in this context that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention was born, providing a legal framework for refugee protection and solutions that embodied the determination of Western states to ensure that people who were forced to flee their own country were treated in a humane, consistent and cooperative manner.
In addition to providing a definition of the refugee concept, the Convention identified the circumstances under which a person could be refused refugee status or have that status withdrawn. It specified the rights to which refugees were entitled, including that of not being punished or penalized for entering a country in an irregular manner. The Convention also introduced the principle of nonrefoulement, a French concept meaning that no refugee should be returned to a country where their life or liberty would be at risk.
In recent months, the Trump administration has made it increasingly clear that it wants to dismantle this global asylum system, claiming it is outdated, does not serve US interests and puts too much power in the hands of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which was created at the same time as the 1951 Convention. According to US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, whose father came from an Austrian-Jewish refugee family, “the asylum system has become a huge loophole in our migration laws.” Revisiting the 1951 Convention, he said, “should be a top international priority.”
Instead of the Convention, Landau has argued that a new framework should be established by the international community, or “the need to revisit the asylum system in the 21st century.” The case for such an initiative was summarized in a September 2025 presentation given at a New York City hotel on the margins of the UN General Assembly high-level week. It was pointedly titled, “The Global Refugee and Asylum System: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It.”
According to the statement, fixing the system would require the UN and its member states to recognize that people do not have a right to seek asylum in the place of their choice and that refugee status is temporary rather than permanent. Sovereign states, rather than international organizations, should have sole responsibility for deciding when it was safe for refugees to be returned to their country of origin. And those countries should be obliged to accept the return of their citizens when it was deemed by the deporting country that they no longer needed asylum or their applications for refugee status had been rejected.
But to what extent are these principles really new? Contrary to the statement made by Landau, refugee status is not permanent and can be revoked or terminated in specific conditions. The Convention does not give the UNHCR or any other international body the authority to determine how many and which refugees should be admitted to any country. That is the prerogative of states.
The nonrefoulement principle does nothing to prevent the US or any other country from examining an asylum application, rejecting it and requiring the unsuccessful candidate for refugee status to leave the country. Nor does the Convention give asylum seekers unfettered freedom to choose their final destination.
That is not to suggest that the global asylum system is working perfectly. Refugee numbers have risen significantly in recent years. States around the world are concerned about the cost and impact of large-scale influxes, especially their consequences for national security and social stability. In response, many countries have taken steps to obstruct or deter new refugee arrivals and to induce the return of those in their territory. As a result, the Refugee Convention is contending with serious pressure.
In these circumstances, the US government could have encouraged UNHCR and other countries to take a close, collective look at the global asylum system to determine whether there was a need to review or modify those elements of the Convention to which the US objected.
Instead, it has launched a unilateral offensive against an international agreement that has been signed by 149 states around the world and that has saved millions of lives and acted as a basis for international cooperation on the refugee issue. One can only conclude that the Trump initiative is a manifestation of his disdain for refugees, his dislike for the UN and his determination to project American power and bend other states to his will.
But will the US be successful in dismantling and replacing the Refugee Convention? While other prosperous countries share many of the Trump administration’s concerns, indications suggest they would prefer to retain the Convention in principle but to ignore it in practice when they deem it best to do so.
Refugee-hosting states in the developing world have not yet declared their position on the Trump proposals. But in the wake of major aid cuts by the US and other donor states, they are likely to be unnerved by an approach to the refugee issue that will confine an even larger proportion of the world’s refugees to its poorest countries, where around 75 percent of refugees currently live.
And what about UNHCR? The organization is not in a strong position. It remains highly dependent on US funding, which has traditionally provided around 40 percent of the agency’s budget. In January 2026, a new high commissioner will take office. The candidate selected for the post by the UN secretary-general is heavily dependent on the endorsement of the Trump administration.
Despite its weakness, the UN Refugee Agency has a statutory responsibility to safeguard the Convention and the basic principles of refugee protection. It has the qualified support of many states, as well as the backing of the extensive nongovernmental organization, asylum advocacy and human rights communities. UNHCR retains diplomatic legitimacy, moral authority and an enormous amount of legal expertise.
The new high commissioner will undoubtedly seek to be on good terms with the Trump administration and might even concede to a clarification of certain parts of the Convention, but she or he can also be expected to engage with other states, reminding them of its strengths and the detailed deliberations that were required to forge an international consensus on the instrument in 1951.
US-based advocacy organizations, such as Human Rights First, which is leading a campaign to resist the Trump initiative, have little doubt that the Trump administration will ignore other voices and attempt to bully, induce and cajole other governments into accepting its proposals for a new approach to asylum.
But what will be the results of such a process? Writing a new, fully fledged Convention will take time, involve intense discussions with other states and is not guaranteed to win US agreement.
If the process becomes too sticky, a simple and unilateral US withdrawal from the UN Refugee Convention might prove to be Trump’s preference. Having set the ball rolling on this issue, however, he cannot be expected to leave the status quo unchanged.