Questions about the future of international refugee law have been asked almost since its inception. The first universal refugee treaty, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, originally limited protection to refugees who fled ‘as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951’,11 although the drafters did express the hope that the treaty would ‘have value as an example exceeding its contractual scope’22 and be applied to other refugees as well. For the first five decades of its existence, UNHCR’s mandate was limited to five-year terms, which were renewed successively until the General Assembly decided, in 2003, to make the agency’s mandate permanent, or at least to continue ‘until the refugee problem is solved’.33