DETAINED ON WORLD REFUGEE DAY Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration has forcibly taken approximately 2,000 children away from their parents at the U.S-Mexico border. Condemned by the UN as well as by politicians on all sides of the political spectrum, this “zero tolerance” policy has seen children as young as 18 […]
News & Events
Children at the Heart of Human Rights
While there is a growing international consensus that the best interests of the child must be respected by ending the practice of child detention, many countries around the world continue to place children in detention facilities. This week, the GDP’s Senior Researcher, Mariette Grange, spoke on the theme of children in detention at the Geneva Summer School […]

Challenging Migrant Detention: Human Rights, Advocacy and Mental Health
Notions of the unwanted “other,” the “illegal” migrant, and the “bogus” refugee are increasingly prominent in public discourse, lending support to stringent border control policies whereby states are increasingly relying upon the use of detention to control the movement of foreigners. The detrimental impact of these trends on the health and wellbeing of migrants and […]
Protecting the Rights of Migrants: International Norms Facing Contemporary Challenges
GDP Researcher Mariette Grange gave a workshop to government representatives, academics, representatives of international and non-governmental organisations, and representatives of national human rights institutions as part of the “Protecting the Rights of Migrants: International Norms Facing Contemporary Challenges” course in Sanremo, Italy. Organised by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) in partnership with the Organisation Internationale […]
May 2018 Newsletter
Welcome to the Global Detention Project’s May 2018 newsletter. For any questions about our content, please contact us at: admin@globaldetentionproject.org OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in Denmark: Where Officials Cheer the Deprivation of Liberty of “Rejected Asylum Seekers” Denmark has pursued increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum policies. During the past three years, the country has adopted […]

The Effectiveness of the EU Return Policy at All Costs: The Coercive Use of Administrative Pre-Removal Detention
In February 2017, the European Commission (EC) adopted a specific Recommendation to guide EU states in the interpretation of the Returns Directive, stressing that detention can be essential in enhancing the effectiveness of the return system. However, despite its administrative label, pre-removal detention as interpreted by the EC contains punitive elements. GDP Researcher Izabella Majcher […]
April 2018 Newsletter
Welcome to the Global Detention Project’s April Newsletter. For any questions about our content, please contact us at: admin@globaldetentionproject.org OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in Luxembourg: Systematic Deprivation of Liberty Although Luxembourg has a very small immigration detention system, the number of detainees has risen in recent years. Since opening a dedicated detention […]

Thinking Beyond Detention
The GDP’s Michael Flynn participated in the University of Oxford’s Border Criminologies 5th birthday conference—“Beyond Critique”—on 19/20 April 2018. With support from the Bonavero Human Rights Institute at the University of Oxford and the Migration Policy Centre at the European University Institute, the two-day conference brought together an international group of artists, scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, […]
March 2018 Newsletter
Welcome to the Global Detention Project’s March 2018 newsletter. For any questions about our content, please contact us at: admin@globaldetentionproject.org OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in Ireland: Will Better Detention Mean More Detention? The number of individuals placed in immigration detention in Ireland is relatively low. However, as the GDP’s latest country profile […]

International Women’s Day: Exposing the Plight of Women in Immigration Detention
This International Women’s Day, dozens of women are on hunger strike at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the UK. As they protest against the government’s “offensive” immigration practices, like the detention of people who came to the UK as children and the detention of survivors of torture, these women—some of whom are themselves victims of sexual abuse and trafficking—are being held indefinitely at a privately operated facility that has a long history of accusations of sexual abuse by its staff. […]
