© UNHCR/G. Gordon

On 28th July 2011, UNHCR offices around the world marked the 60th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention – the legal foundation on which most of the agency's work worldwide is based. The landmark comes at a time when forced displacement has become increasingly complex and as developing countries struggle to host millions of refugees.

The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was formally adopted on 28th July 1951 to resolve the refugee problem in Europe after World War II. This global treaty provides a definition of who qualifies as a refugee – a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion – and spells out the rights and obligations between host countries and refugees.

The Convention has enabled the agency to help millions of uprooted people to restart their lives in the last 60 years. Today, it remains the cornerstone of refugee protection. It has adapted and endured through six decades of massive changes, but it faces unprecedented challenges.

Denmark was the first state to ratify the 1951 Convention. Sixty years on, 148 countries (three-quarters of the world's nations) are parties to the Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol. Nauru is the most recent, having joined last month. But there are still parts of the world – most notably South and South-east Asia and the Middle East – where the majority of states have yet to ratify the Convention.

In December, the UN refugee agency will convene a ministerial meeting of states party to the 1951 Convention. States will be able to reaffirm their commitment to the Convention as the key instrument of refugee protection and pledge concrete actions to resolve refugee and statelessness problems. The meeting will also seek ways forward on protection gaps in the fast-changing environment of forced displacement.

UNHCR believes that even one person forced to flee war or persecution, is too many. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Convention, the agency has launched the "1" campaign, which aims to humanize an issue often reduced to numbers by telling stories of individual refugees and other forcibly displaced people.

For more information on the "1" campaign, go to: www.unhcr.org/do1thing