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Following the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder on 25 May 2020, memorials in remembrance of individuals implicated in colonialism or slavery have come under increasing attack. This article discusses and contextualizes challenges in 2020 to the memorialization of Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) and Emily Ruete née Salama bint Said (1844–1924) in Hamburg, where the legacy of the German colonial past is particularly palpable. The article argues that proposed solutions—be it the demolition of the city’s main Bismarck monument, its restoration and the erection of a counter-memorial adjacent to it, or the un-naming of a street named after Ruete—potentially erase the complexities and contradictions of the lives of historical actors, are often informed by a desire to quarantine the past, and, just as often, fail to engage with its continuation in the present.

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Focusing on the period from the adoption of the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum to the 1977 Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Territorial Asylum in Geneva, this article examines attempts to arrive at an international treaty on territorial asylum. Charting the trajectory of the drafting process, it shows how the ambition of international lawyers and UNHCR to go beyond article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1967 Declaration was eventually thwarted. Australia played a significant role at the 1977 conference and particular attention is paid to the development of its position. The article argues that the discussions over the proposed convention on territorial asylum were symptomatic of States’ unwillingness to countenance a right to asylum, and their concomitant willingness to extend the principle of non-refoulement.