International Refugee Protection

During the summer of 1984, 1 spent three months in the legal offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.) in Geneva.1 While there, I spoke with a large number of lawyers, "protection officers" as they are called in the United Nations argot, about their work protecting refugees. I was particularly interested in the notions about international refugee and asylum law which they brought to their work. As I spoke with protection officers and read what they had written about international law, I became fascinated by the relationship between their collective vision of their individual or institutional role as international lawyers and their vision of the international legal or doctrinal fields in which they worked. This article discusses that relationship. I explore changes in the roles of international refugee lawyers at the U.N.H.C.R. and changes in their images of the doctrinal fields of international refugee and asylum law. Some qualifications are in order before I begin. This is not an article about international asylum and refugee law except as seen by international protection officers.2 Nor is it an article about the international institution protecting refugees, except as shaped by images of international legal doctrine. 3