Abstract

The author analyses the recent prevarications of the High Commissioner for Refugees towards the increasingly restrictive and repressive measures taken by European States against asylum-seekers. Instead of defending the rights of the refugees who are supposedly under its protection, the HCR was quick to bend over to the rhetorical displacements presenting asylum-seekers, no longer as victims, but as « cheaters » imposing an « unbearable burden » on rich West-European societies. As a consequence of a series of self-repudiations, it now approves of projects leading to the confinement of asylum-seekers, thus acting directly against the spirit and the letter of the Geneva Convention it is in charge of enforcing anywhere in the world. A sad but exemplary case of pragmatism going adrift