The Refugee Convention has been described as the definitive articulation of refugee law and the foundation of the international refugee regime; in its absence it seems law has a lesser role in the protection of refugees. Yet the Refugee Convention does not apply in jurisdictions where a majority of refugees live including most states in the Middle East and Asia. Traditional accounts foreground these regions’ hesitant relationship with this regime and the international community has thus taken the lead. This approach results from a legal orientalism that both mischaracterises these regions’ law and legal institutions and compares them to an idealised account of these entities elsewhere. The resulting zone of exception from the international refugee regime is fundamentally unsustainable and privileges international interests. Resistance to this approach, by local practitioners, within these regions has a record worthy of both caution and further examination.

Our 2020 Annual Conference was scheduled to be held at the University of Wrocław in Poland on July 9-11, 2020.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICON·S Executive Committee has decided to postpone our 2020 Conference to 2021. Our next Annual Conference will take place from July 8-10, 2021, in Wrocław, Poland.
Procedural details regarding the organization of the 2021 Conference will follow in the months ahead.
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