The dramatic political, social, and technological changes since World War II have made the asylum regime established by the 1951 Refugee Convention unsustainable. Because asylum is seen as a “right”, it has become a challenge – arguably an existential challenge – to the sovereignty of developed nations. The measures proposed or taken so far have failed to address the fundamental contradiction between international asylum rules and modern conditions. The beginning of a solution, then, must be to withdraw from multilateral treaties that relate to asylum and for each nation to develop its own asylum policies based on its own interests.
