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Abstract The author analyses the recent prevarications of the High Commissioner for Refugees t owards the increasingly restrictive and repressive measures taken by European States against asylum-seekers. Instead of defending the rights of the refugees who are supposedly under its protection, the HCR was quick to bend over to the rhetorical displacements presenting asylum-seekers, no longer as victims, but as “cheaters” imposing an “unbearable burden” on rich West-European societies.As a consequence of a series of self-repudiations, it now approves of projects leading to the confinement of asylum-seekers,thus acting directly against the spirit and the letter of the Geneva Convention it is in charge of enforcing anywhere in the world.A sad but exemplary case of pragmatism going adrift.