The World Jewish Congress today appealed to a United Nations conference to extend the protection of the projected U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees to victims of possible future persecution. The text of the Draft Convention, which will be considered by a U.N. conference of plenipotentiaries on the status of refugees and stateless persons scheduled to meet in Geneva on July 2nd, limits protection only to those persons who became refugees as a result of events occurring before January 31, 1951.
In a memorandum submitted to Secretary General Trygve Lie for transmission to the conference, the World Jewish Congress pointed out that, with the present unsettled status of the world, now event may well create now groups of refugees, and that it would be tragic of the protection of the international community were denied to the victims of these new outbreaks of persecution.
The memorandum called for a revision of the draft protocol relating to the status of stateless persons, which is to come up for consideration at the Geneva meeting. In particular, the memorandum said that this draft protocol gives no adequate protection in time of emergency or war to refugees who have escaped from persecution in enemy states. The request for the amendment was understood to be based upon the tragic experience of many thousands of victims of Nazi persecution who, during the second world war, were interned and otherwise subjected to exceptional measures in many lands, in spite of the fact that they had been deprived of German nationality by the Nazis and were obviously hostile to the Nazi regime.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
