Exclusion, Securitisation, and the Erosion of Refugee Protection: Contemporary Challenges and Gendered Realities in International Law

Abstract Forced displacement has reached unprecedented levels, with over 123 million people uprooted worldwide, challenging the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. Contemporary drivers—including armed conflict, non-state violence, political repression, and climate-induced instability—produce complex, multi-causal migration that traditional legal frameworks struggle to address. Rather than adapting protections, states such as the United Kingdom and the United States increasingly employ securitised, deterrence-oriented measures, including the UK Illegal Migration Act 2023, U.S. expedited removal, and terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds. These policies operationalise exclusion, criminalisation, and externalisation, disproportionately harming women, children, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others whose persecution falls outside conventional doctrinal categories. Through comparative analysis, this article demonstrates how deterrence-first approaches undermine the humanitarian core of refugee law. It advocates for modernised, gender-responsive, and context-sensitive interpretations, procedural safeguards, oversight of digital and externalisation mechanisms, and multilateral responsibility-sharing to restore the normative integrity of international refugee protection.