Cite as: 509 U. S. 155 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
power to order the Coast Guard to repatriate undocumented aliens intercepted on the high seas.
Nor did the Court of Appeals accept the Government's reliance on Article 33 of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.18 It recognized that the 1980 amendment to the INA had been intended to conform our statutory law to the provisions of the Convention,19 but it
read Article 33.1's prohibition against return, like the statute's, "plainly" to cover "all refugees, regardless of location." 969 F. 2d, at 1362. This reading was supported by the "object and purpose" not only of that Article but also of the Convention as a whole.20 While the Court of Appeals recognized that the negotiating history of the Convention disclosed that the representatives of at least six countries 21 construed the Article more narrowly, it thought that those views might have represented a dissenting position and that, in any event, it would "turn statutory construction on its head" to
18 July 28, 1951, 19 U. S. T. 6259, T. I. A. S. No. 6577.
19 See INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S., at 436-437. Although the United States is not a signatory to the Convention itself, in 1968 it acceded to the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which bound the parties to comply with Articles 2 through 34 of the Convention as to persons who had become refugees because of events taking place after January 1, 1951. See INS v. Stevic, 467 U. S., at 416. Because the Convention established Article 33, and the Protocol merely incorporated it, we shall refer throughout this opinion to the Convention, even though it is the Protocol that applies here.
20 "One of the considerations stated in the Preamble to the Convention is that the United Nations has 'endeavored to assure refugees the widest possible exercise of . . . fundamental rights and freedoms.' The government's offered reading of Article 33.1, however, would narrow the exercise of those freedoms, since refugees in transit, but not present in a sovereign area, could freely be returned to their persecutors. This would hardly provide refugees with 'the widest possible exercise' of fundamental human rights, and would indeed render Article 33.1 'a cruel hoax.' " 969 F. 2d, at 1363.
21 The Netherlands, Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. See id., at 1365.
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