On 24 June, the GDP’s Executive Director will be participating in a webinar hosted by Ryerson University (Toronto) exploring the particular vulnerabilities migrants and asylum seekers face during the Covid-19 pandemic. Michael Flynn will join Margarita Pintin-Perez (OCASI – Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants), Petra Molnar (Faculty of Law, University of Toronto), and Dr. […]
News & Events
NEWSLETTER: Spain’s Response to Covid-19; A Paradigm Shift in Argentina
LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in Spain: A Rapid Response to Covid-19 On 6 May 2020, Spain reported that for the first time in its history, its immigration detention facilities, “Foreign Internment Centres,” were empty. These centres had long been the target of activists, local politicians, and human rights bodies, who argued that they were unnecessary and […]
Joint NGO Letter: UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies During the COVID-19 Pandemic
As a result of Covid-19, in-person sessions of the UN human rights sessions have been postponed until at least June. While the suspension is affecting the work of the treaty bodies, it is important that they undertake many of the mandated activities such as considerations of individual communications and urgent actions, adoption of lists of issues (LOIs) and lists of issues prior […]
NEWSLETTER: Launching the Covid-19 Global Immigration Detention Platform
THE COVID-19 GLOBAL IMMIGRATION DETENTION PLATFORM As the coronavirus pandemic changes the lives of societies around the world, countries are being forced to alter their detention and deportation decisions. Many countries have already begun releasing detainees because of their inability to deport them. Others have been forced to close detention centres because of the spread […]
NEWSLETTER: Penalising People in Need, from Korea to the Caribbean to the Netherlands
OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in the Republic of Korea: Penalising People in Need of Protection Over the last two decades, South Korea has implemented increasingly restrictive asylum and migrant worker policies. The government does not provide adequate data about detention, making it challenging to assess trends in the country, but observers report that this […]
Prison for Profit
On 7 March, GDP Director Michael Flynn joined Abdul Aziz Muhamat (2019 Martin Ennals Prize Winner), Ilse Van Velzen (filmmaker), Ruth Hopkins (investigative journalist), Agnès Callamard (UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and Director of “Freedom of Expression”), and journalist Luc Hermann to discuss the privatisation of prisons and administrative detention in […]
NEWSLETTER: Immigration Detention in Austria
OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Immigration Detention in Austria: Where the Refugee “Crisis” Never Ends Austria’s domestic politics have been heavily influenced by a divisive debate over the treatment of migrants and refugees. This has had an important impact on the country’s immigration detention practices. Despite years of declining detainee numbers prior to the onset of Europe’s […]
NEWSLETTER: The Uses of Social Media in Migration Journeys
OUR LATEST PUBLICATIONS Physical Fences and Digital Divides: Final Report of the Global Detention Project Special Investigation into the Uses of Electronic Media in Today’s Migration Journeys Smartphones, social media platforms, and other tech tools are today “migrant essentials” that can assist people in making life-saving decisions and bring public attention to abuses that migrants and […]
Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty: States Must End Immigration Detention of Children and Families
On 20 November, the UN Independent Expert on Children Deprived of Liberty, Manfred Nowak, released the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. This study is the result of years of work by Nowak, with assistance provided by numerous external advisers and experts, including GDP staff members, evaluating all forms of deprivation of liberty of […]
NEWSLETTER: The Convention on the Rights of the Child – Thirty Years On
Today marks 30 years since the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The adoption of the convention marked a critical milestone in global efforts to ensure that the human rights of children are respected, including the rights of migrant and refugee children deprived of their liberty. At the heart […]
