Professor Achilles Skordas has contributed to a new Commentary on international refugee law, edited by Professor Andreas Zimmermann (Potsdam University), and published by Oxford University Press (cxxxiii + 1799 pages). The Commentary is the product of research by forty-eight scholars and refugee law practitioners from sixteen countries.

This is the fourth commentary since the adoption of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, often referred to as the Magna Carta of refugees. In the words of Professor Zimmermann, the ‘admirable early commentaries’ of Nehemiah Robinson, Atle Grahl-Madsen, and Paul Weis served as models, but the current work goes well beyond them. It contains the analysis of the provisions of the Convention and the 1967 Protocol, it offers an overview of municipal and international jurisprudence and state practice, it covers regional developments, and it includes topics cutting across various provisions. It also comprises select bibliography and a list of the relevant documents from the travaux préparatoires for each provision.

Published on the 60th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention, the Commentary is addressed to the refugee law community, including practitioners, judges, academics, students, researchers and policy-makers. At the present time, there are 147 State parties to either the Geneva Convention or to the 1967 Protocol.