Immigration detention of asylum-seeking unaccompanied children became legally permissible in Poland in January 2026 as a result of a 2025 amendment to Poland’s Law on International Protection. The Polish government insists that the amendment, which was adopted without public consultations, will help keep children safe despite the fact that it contravenes Poland’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as EU and domestic law. […]
Children in Detention
Ethiopia: Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
99th Pre-Session – September 2024 Issues Related to the Arrest, Detention, Removal, Separation, and Safety of Refugee and Migrant Children (See also: Oral Submission to the Committee, 19 September 2024) This submission reviews progress on Ethiopia’s efforts to protect the human rights of child migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers since the country submitted its “Combined sixth […]
Poland: Joint Submission to the 76th Session of the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Issues Related to Refugee and Migrants Rights, Immigration Enforcement and Detention CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. DETENTION CONTEXT III. CONCERNS & RECOMMENDATIONS RELATED TO CONVENTION PROVISIONS I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Association for Legal Intervention (Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej, or SIP) is a Warsaw-based civil society organisation that promotes the legal equality of all people, with a particular focus on refugees and […]
Immigration Detention in Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China): Severe Detention Regimes and Paltry Conditions
Detention is a key immigration enforcement measure in Hong Kong, despite the fact that detention facilities have long been criticised for poor conditions and complaints of mistreatment. […]
Türkiye: Joint Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
In a submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the GDP and the International Refugee Rights Association assess Türkiye’s laws and practices concerning detention of children for immigration-related reasons. […]
Joint Submission to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Preparation for its Visit to Poland
The submission highlights concerns regarding Poland’s discriminatory detention practices of non-Ukrainian refugees, inhuman and degrading conditions in “Guarded Centres for Foreigners,” abuses of non-citizens on the border with Belarus, and the country’s increasing detention of children for migration purposes. […]
Immigration Detention in Australia: Turning Arbitrary Detention into a Global Brand
Australia’s migration detention system is uniquely severe, arbitrary, and punitive. It includes a range of extreme and controversial policies–mandatory, indefinite, offshore, fully privatised detention–which are given blanket legal cover, are vigorously defended in the face of growing global opprobrium, and are spreading to countries near and far. […]
Immigration Detention in Mexico: Between the United States and Central America
Mexico has one of the largest immigration detention systems in the world, employing several dozen detention centres—euphemistically called “estaciones migratorias”—and detaining tens of thousands of people every year. […]
The Debate over Alternatives to Immigration Detention of Children
This essay addresses challenging questions surrounding efforts to promote “alternatives to immigration detention” in the context of children in administrative removal proceedings. Although there are important provisions in international law that provide protections for children in these procedures and arguably limit states’ resort to detention, there is no provision that expressly forbids the immigration detention […]
Global Detention Project Annual Report 2017
Throughout 2018, the Global Detention Project’s researchers documented the conditions non-citizens face in detention facilities around the world to ensure that systematic information about the treatment migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers face in detention is made available to advocates and so that governments can be held accountable. […]
