Global/Africa: International cooperation between North and South to enhance refugee protection

The responsibility to share the financial or physical burden for global refugee protection outside of a state's immediate territorial or jurisdictional obligation to not return refugees to persecution is recognised in the Preamble to the 1951 Refugees Convention. However, given that "burden sharing" has not been formally recognised as an international legal obligation, the states in the global south, as a result of the "accident of geography" of being closer to areas of conflict or human rights-abusing regimes, have assumed responsibility for hosting the overwhelming majority of the world's refugees.