ANNUAL REPORT
This year’s Annual Report focuses on where the GDP’s work has made an impact over the past year. We discuss, for instance, the growing use of the GDP’s online database, the Global Immigration Detention Observatory, and the role it has played in calls for change. We highlight how UN human rights mechanisms have made calls to action reflecting our recommendations while media outlets across the globe are making increasing use of our data to draw attention to the plight of detainees. We feature cases where the GDP website has helped connect families with detainees. And we reflect on how our interactions with academics, NGOs, government officials, and international organisations have played a role in building new consensus on reforming detention institutions.
OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS
Immigration Detention in Croatia: Shrinking Space for Independent Monitoring
Traditionally a transit country for people attempting to reach Western Europe, Croatia took on new importance for refugees and migrants in late 2015 when the main migrant route shifted through the country. Since then, the government has grown increasingly security-focused, albeit while maintaining a humanitarian narrative. Non-citizens may be detained even before they receive a return decision and are required to pay for their detention. The country’s treatment of child migrants and asylum seekers has also been the focus of criticism, particularly its policy of placing unaccompanied children in institutions that are inadequately equipped to care for them and its practice of placing unaccompanied children with unrelated adults.
Immigration Detention in Bulgaria: Fewer Migrants and Refugees, More Fences
Although the number of irregular non-citizens apprehended in Bulgaria has plummeted in recent years, detention remains a key tool in the country’s response to migration and asylum flows. It has also spent some 85 million EUR to construct a fence along its border with Turkey. Bulgaria’s detention centres reportedly lack appropriate health care services, have substandard conditions, and fail to provide adequate access to procedural guarantees, spurring criticism from civil society organisations and international watchdogs.
NEWS AND ACTIVITIES
GCM Indicators: Objective 21: Cooperate in Facilitating Safe and Dignified Return and Readmission, as well as Sustainable Reintegration
As part of the Refugee Law Initiative’s blog series exploring the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), GDP Researcher Izabella Majcher addresses Objective 21 (“Cooperate in facilitating safe and dignified return and readmission, as well as sustainable reintegration.”) Majcher proposes focusing on six indicators, which draw from the provisions of binding international treaties, including the Convention against Torture (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW), taking into account authoritative interpretations of these conventions by their official monitoring bodies. More information is available here.
12th European Forum on the Rights of the Child
GDP Executive Director Michael Flynn participated in the Annual EU Forum on the Rights of the Child held in Brussels on 2-3 April. One of the thematic priorities of this year’s forum was “the protection of children in migration.” In his interventions at the forum, the GDP’s director highlighted the failure of many EU states to properly account for children in detention, the conclusion of the 2017 Joint CRC-CMW General Comment on the human rights of children in migration that the immigration detention of children violates their best interests, and the need for participants to look beyond Europe’s borders and take into account the violations child migrants and asylum seekers face as of result of EU-financed migration controls abroad. More information is available here.
Consultation of the UN Network on Migration with Civil Society
This month, the GDP participated in the inaugural “Consultation of the UN Network on Migration with Civil Society.” The Network on Migration was established by the UN to assist Member States in implementing the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), as well as to act as a source of ideas, tools, reliable data and information, analysis, and policy guidance on migrant issues. Participants discussed the Start-Up Fund of the Capacity Building Mechanism; how best to ensure on-going engagement between the Network and civil society; and how collective engagement can be translated into sustained support for GCM implementation, follow-up, and review at global, regional, and national levels. More information is available here.
UN Committee on Migrant Workers: Draft General Comment No. 5
In April, the GDP submitted information to the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (CMW) following a call for stakeholders to provide inputs on a detailed questionnaire to be used in drafting General Comment No.5 on Migrants’ Rights to Liberty and Freedom from Arbitrary Detention. The CMW requested detailed legal and policy information on States parties to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers as part its drafting process for the general comment. Thus, the GDP indicated data and other resources available through our database and website to assist the committee in completing its documentation efforts. View the CMW’s Draft General Comment No. 5 “Concept Note and Call for Inputs” here.
GDP ON THE RECORD
- “A Better Way: Community-Based Programming as an Alternative to Immigrant Incarceration,” National Immigrant Justice Center, April 2019.
- “Quarterly Mixed Migration Update: Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean,” Mixed Migration Centre, April 2019.
- “Demography, Migration, and the Labour Market in Kuwait,” F. De Bel-Air, European University Institute and the Gulf Research Center, April 2019.
- “Kadyrow & Kritik [Kadyrov and Criticism],” Caucasian Knot, der Freitag, April 2019.
- “From Penal to “Civil”: A Legacy of Private Prison Policy in a Landscape of Migrant Detention,” S. Lopez, American Quarterly, 71(1), March 2019.
- “Civic Mobilisation Around Immigration Detention: Exploring Motivations and Experiences,” A. Lindley, Geoforum, (102), June 2019.
- “Identifying Limits to Immigration Detention Transfers and Venue,” A. Pon, Stanford Law Review, March 2019.
- “Asylum Seekers and the Crisis of Accountability in Liberal Democracies: How an Ethical Approach Can Illuminate the Public’s Critical Role,” C. Banham and K. Anantharajah,Journal of Refugee Studies, February 2019.
- “Regional Deterrence and ‘Non-Genuine’ Refugees: The Punitive Legacy of the 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action,” C. Loughnan, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, April 2019.
- “Unsettling State(s): On Reading Nothing Personal? Geographies of Governing and Activism in the British Asylum System,” D. Conlon, Dialogues in Human Geography, March 2019.
- “In the Shadow of Benevolence,” A. Williams, Contemporary Review of Genocides and Political Violence, April 2019.
- Migration Law and the Externalisation of Border Controls: European State Responsibility,A. Liguori, Routledge, 2019.
- The European Union and North Africa: Prospects and Challenges, A.A. Ghafar (ed),Brookings Institution Press, 2019.
- “Legitimized Refugees: A Critical Investigation of Legitimacy Claims Within the Precedents of Swedish Asylum Law,” M. Joorman, Lund University, 2019.
- “Abolition Theology? Or, the Abolition of Theology? Towards a Negative Theology of Practice,” B. Daniels, Religions, March 2019.
- “Human Rights Violation, Mental Harassment and Physical Abuse by Thai Immigration, Thai Security, Thai Airways, and Korean Immigration,” Thaiimmigrationairwaystorture.com,April 2019.
- “Migranti, perché la Guardia costiera libica non sempre risponde alle chiamate di soccorso? [Migrants, Why Doesn’t the Libyan Coastguard Always Respond to Emergency Calls?],” A. Maggiolo, Today, April 2019.
- “Canarios en una mina: la crisis migratoria de los cayucos y la europeización de la política migratoria, [The Canaries in a Mine: The Cayucos’ Migratory Crisis and the Europeanization of Migration Policy],” C.M. Dudek, and C. Pestano, Spanish Review of Political Science, (49), March 2019.
- “Teoria política e migração: para combater o silêncio [Political Theory and Migration: To Combat Silence],” R.W. Ventura in: Justiça, Teoria Crítica e Democracia, Volume II, D.L. Werle et al (eds), 2019.
