Remember, remember…

It’s become almost routine: politicians making bold promises to fix everything, while blaming migrants, minorities, and the powerless for society’s problems. It’s a tired formula, and yet it keeps working – partly because it’s easier to scapegoat than to confront systemic failures. What’s more troubling, though, is how many people have come to accept this, forgetting – or willfully distorting – the history that brought us here.

Take the 1951 Refugee Convention. It was born out of global horror – a collective recognition that no one should be persecuted for their race, religion, ethnicity, class, or political belief. It wasn’t just about offering refuge; it was about building a world that understood how quickly silence can turn into complicity. It was, in theory, a commitment to humanity.

But over time, the moral clarity of that commitment has faded. The same countries that proudly signed the Convention have begun eroding it piece by piece. And the reason is uncomfortably clear: as more Black and brown people began claiming rights under international law, the promise of protection became politically inconvenient. The legal infrastructure that once seemed noble now raises eyebrows – not because the principles have changed, but because the people seeking refuge do not always fit the original, often unspoken, image of who “deserves” protection.

We see this hypocrisy in action. While white South African farmers facing land reform are sometimes welcomed under asylum provisions, countless others fleeing war, poverty, or persecution are turned away, criminalised, or left to drown. The framework meant to protect the persecuted is being weaponised against them – reinterpreted, redefined, and redrawn based on race, geography, and political utility.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t just a legal shift. It’s a moral failure – and a dangerous one. Because when we start dismantling the rights of the most vulnerable, we also dismantle the historical memory that those rights were built on. And without that memory, we risk repeating the very injustices we once vowed never to allow again.

The laws that need changing aren’t the ones protecting minorities – it’s the ones that criminalise them. It’s the legal and political machinery that turns survival into suspicion, and migration into threat. As we break away from our commitments, we’re also breaking from the very ideals that the West claims to champion: empathy, justice, and human dignity.

We can’t keep calling ourselves a beacon of humanity while picking and choosing whose rights matter. Democracy isn’t just about institutions or elections – it’s about how we treat those who have no power. If we continue down this selective path, what we’ll lose isn’t just international credibility. We’ll lose the very soul of the democratic project.