The home secretary has suggested the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention needs updating to stop “simply being gay or a woman” being a reason for people to claim asylum in the UK.
In a speech to a right-wing thinktank in New York today, Suella Braverman will ask whether the 1951 convention is “fit for our modern age” or “whether it is in need of reform”.
She cites the rising number of refugees across the world and those arriving in the UK in small boats as proof we “now live in a completely different time” to when the convention was written.
Here Sky News looks at what the convention says and how difficult it would be to change.
What does it say?
The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was originally signed by 28 countries, including the UK, in Geneva in July 1951.
As a “post-Second World War instrument” it was “originally limited in scope to persons fleeing events occurring before 1 January 1951 and within Europe”, namely the Holocaust.
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But it has since expanded and updated with more than 100 countries now signatories.
It defines what a refugee is, what rights they have and what obligations states have to them when they arrive.
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According to the convention, a refugee is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”.
With the development of international human rights law, the convention says it should now be applied “without discrimination as to sex, age, disability, sexuality, or other prohibited grounds of discrimination”.
It gives refugees the right to “non-discrimination, non-penalisation and non-refoulement”.
The “non-penalisation” section means refugees “should not be penalised for their illegal entry or stay” in the country they flee to and recognises that “seeking asylum can require refugees to breach immigration rules”.
The “non-refoulement” part bans countries from “expelling or returning a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom”.
According to the convention, countries are also obliged to give asylum seekers access to “courts, primary education, work, and documentation, including a refugee travel document in passport form”.
The convention does not apply to refugees who benefit from another specific UN or equivalent humanitarian programme, for example people from Palestine who fall under the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Image: Home Secretary Suella Braverman
What does Suella Braverman want?
The home secretary says that while after the Second World War, the convention conferred protection on around two million refugees, some data analysis suggests that in the current context, this number is now 780 million.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) puts the original figure at one million and the current one at 35.3 million, as of the end of 2022.
Suella Braverman argues that the provisions on having a “well-founded fear of persecution” have been watered down to just “discrimination”.
She says this has created an asylum system where “simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection”.
Can you change the convention?
The original 1951 convention was updated in 1967 to remove the “geographical and temporal limitations” and give it “universal coverage”.
Since then it has been “supplemented” according to the “progressive development of international human rights law”.
Although the convention itself hasn’t changed – the way courts have interpreted it to rule on cases has – providing new case law for their own and other countries.
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Natasha Tsangarides, associate director of advocacy for the charity Freedom from Torture, says Ms Braverman is wrong to say case law now defines a refugee as facing discrimination – not persecution.
“That’s incorrect, there’s no case law to support that,” she told Sky News.
“People, whether they are LGBT or not, need a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ to be able to seek asylum.”
On the growing numbers of migrants globally, which some estimate could reach a quarter of a billion due to the climate crisis and other conflicts, Ms Tsangarides stresses that isn’t the issue.
“It’s correct to say that more people are on the move than they were before. But of those displaced people, two thirds stay in their country and just move to a different part.
“Of that third who leave, seven out of ten stay in their region, which means only a small fraction of them come to Europe and try to seek asylum in the UK.
“The asylum system is in chaos, not because more people are coming, but because the Home Office has been presided over by chaotic governments that have neglected the system.”
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Immigration lawyer Harjap Bhangal also says changing the convention or the way it’s interpreted by judges and Home Office decision makers won’t solve the UK asylum crisis.
Out of 78,768 asylum applications for the year ending June 2023, 71% were approved.
Only six return agreements have been struck in recent years and there is still a Home Office backlog of more than 130,000 cases.
“The problem here is the government isn’t sending as many people back as they used to,” Mr Bhangal said.
“The removals numbers have been whittled down. That isn’t the fault of the convention – it’s the machinery and a case of a bad workman blaming his tools.”
Official changes, like the one in 1967, have to be approved by all 149 member states, Mr Bhangal added, which with Ms Braverman’s lack of success on returns agreements, would be near impossible.
“I don’t think she’s going to get the support,” he said. “At the moment she can’t even get EU countries to sign return agreements, so it’s not even workable.
“Changing the wording of the convention isn’t going to stop the boats – people smugglers don’t care about what the official definition of a refugee is.”
Lawmakers in the US states of Minnesota and Alabama filed companion bills to identical existing bills that if passed into law, would allow each state to buy Bitcoin.
The Minnesota Bitcoin Act, or HF 2946, was introduced to the state’s House by Republican Representative Bernie Perryman on April 1, following an identical bill introduced on March 17 by GOP state Senator Jeremy Miller.
Meanwhile, on the same day in Alabama, Republican state Senator Will Barfoot introduced Senate Bill 283, while a bi-partisan group of representatives led by Republican Mike Shaw filed the identical House Bill 482, which allows for the state to invest in crypto, but essentially limits it to Bitcoin (BTC).
Twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly name Bitcoin
Minnesota’s Bitcoin Act would allow the state’s investment board to invest state assets in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and permit state employees to add crypto to retirement accounts.
It would also exempt crypto gains from state income taxes and give residents the option to pay state taxes and fees with Bitcoin.
The twin Alabama bills don’t explicitly identify Bitcoin, but would limit the state’s crypto investment into assets that have a minimum market value of $750 billion, a criterion that only Bitcoin currently meets.
26 Bitcoin reserve bills now introduced in the US
Introducing identical bills is not uncommon in the US and is typically done to speed up the bicameral legislative process so laws can pass more quickly.
Bills to create a Bitcoin reserve have been introduced in 26 US states, with Arizona currently the closest to passing a law to make one, according to data from the bill tracking website Bitcoin Laws.
Arizona currently leads in the US state Bitcoin reserve race. Source: Bitcoin Laws
Pennsylvania was one of the first US states to introduce a Bitcoin reserve bill, in November 2024. However, the initiative was reportedly eventually rejected, with similar bills also killed in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wyoming are the five states thathave rejected Bitcoin reserve initiatives. Source: Bitcoin Laws
According to a March 3 report by Barron’s, “red states” like Montana have faced setbacks to the Bitcoin reserve initiatives amid political confrontations between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.