Despite legal safeguards and stated commitments to protect migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers—including those in detention—Thailand’s treatment of these groups continues to fall short of international standards. Together with our partner, the Cross Cultural Foundation, we raised multiple concerns with the Universal Periodic Review’s Working Group, urging critical reforms to the country’s detention policies and practices and broader compliance with its international human rights obligations. […]
Asia-Pacific
Thailand: Detention and Coerced Returns of Vietnamese Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Thailand has ramped up the detention of Vietnamese migrants with reports indicating that Vietnamese officials have been given access to Thai detention facilities to coerce detainees to return. These practices, alongside high-profile cases of extradition and arbitrary detention of asylum seekers, reveal persistent breaches of human rights norms despite the fact that Thailand remains a UN Network on Migration “champion country” for implementation of the Global Compact for Migration. […]
Australia: UN Experts Raise Serious Concerns Regarding Country’s Migrant Detention System
In December, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention delivered a sobering assessment of Australia’s immigration detention system, highlighting numerous policies that call into question the country’s adherence to international human rights obligations. […]
Malaysia: Joint Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Together with the Malaysia-based North South Initiative (NSI) and Myanmar Ethnics Organization (MEO), the GDP has urged the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to demand that Malaysia immediately stop detaining child refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants for migration-related reasons. […]
Uzbekistan: Cooperation with EU and US Raises Questions about Human Rights Obligations
Uzbekistan’s immigration laws and practices have received little international attention. However, new arrangements with both the European Union and the United States are raising questions about the country’s commitments to its human rights obligations. […]
India: Joint Submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
In a joint submission with the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, the GDP highlights concerns to CEDAW regarding the detention, refoulement, and other human rights violations faced by women refugees and migrants in India. […]
Sri Lanka: Detainees Decry Poor Conditions and Indefinite Detention in Welisara Detention Centre
In recent weeks, the Global Detention Project has received several testimonies from a group of people held in immigration detention in Sri Lanka, depicting troubling detention conditions and instances of indefinite immigration detention. The accounts of their treatment at the Welisara Detention Centre reflect wider concerns about the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in the country, including the arbitrary detention of children and asylum seekers. […]
Kazakhstan’s Treatment of Migrant Workers Scrutinised by the UN Human Rights Committee
Central Asia’s most prosperous state, Kazakhstan attracts a large number of migrant workers from surrounding countries, mainly Uzbekistan, Russia, and Tajikistan. While authorities note the need for skilled migrants to join the country’s workforce as part of the country’s Migration Policy Concept 2023-2027, Central Asian migrants–commonly employed as low-wage labourers–have often been the focus of widespread migrant raids for arrest, detention, and deportation. In recent submissions to the UN Human Rights Committee, the GDP and partner ILI brought critical attention to the country’s treatment of foreigners, prompting the committee to issue important recommendations. […]
India Renews Efforts to Remove “Illegal Foreigners” in the Wake of Pahalgam Terrorist Attack
Since the Pahalgam terrorist attacks in Kashmir in April, anti-Islamic public and official attitudes across India have led to important ethnic groups in the country–including Rohingya and Bengali-speaking Muslims–being targeted for racial violence and increasing detention and deportation operations. […]
Vietnam: Submission to the UN Human Rights Committee
Despite Vietnam’s growing importance in international migration and the increasing numbers of reports about harmful detention practices, to date the country’s immigration enforcement regime has not been adequately scrutinised by international human rights monitoring bodies. In this submission, the GDP and APRRN urge the CCPR to take steps to ensure that Vietnam is aware of its binding legal responsibilities concerning migrants in the country, especially with respect to ICCPR Articles 2, 9, 10, 13, and 14. […]
