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This article details the origins of the human right to international asylum. While previous works locate its beginnings in East–West political conflict in the 1950s, I note the importance of American opposition to the Soviet invasion of Poland and the Baltic countries in 1939–40 and its later consequences for relief work with post-war Displaced Persons from those countries. Given that Eastern European states at the UN claimed to protect people displaced from these non-recognised territories, British and American delegates were forced to create a new refugee definition that allowed DPs to reject state protections and to seek asylum as refugees.

During the 20th century there were more than two hundred wars and violent conflicts that displaced over 100 million people across the globe. The scale of wartime displacements in the 20th century is both horrifying and unique in world history. During an “age of total war,” non‐belligerents and civilian infrastructure were deliberately targeted by military forces. The Hague Convention of 1899 recognized that the armed forces of belligerent parties consisted of both combatants and non‐combatants. Artillery fire, carpet bombing, nuclear weapons, and other technologies extended front‐line combat onto the home front, blurring the line between civilians and enemy non‐combatants. No longer confined to the battlefield, states and insurgent groups widely engaged in unconventional warfare, which brought conflicts onto city streets and into people's homes. During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, displaced civilians were themselves used as a weapon through the strategic forced expulsion of Albanian refugees.

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Vladimir Gandelsman was born in 1948 in Leningrad. His poetry writtenduring the Soviet period was intended for the literary underground. Aftercoming to the United States in 1991, he was first able to publish his work, andis now highly acclaimed in Russia, where he won the Moscow ReckoningPrize, the highest award for poetry, in 2011. He lives outside New York City.He is the author of eighteen poetry collections, one verse novel, severalimportant translations into Russian that include Macbeth, and a volume ofcollected works. In English translation, his works have been published in orare forthcoming from Modern Poetry in Translation, The Common, TheNotre Dame Review, and The Mad Hatters’ Review.