Abstract
Carrier sanctions, by which transport companies are penalised if they do not refuse embarkation to undocumented persons, play a role in perpetuating harms (denial of refugee protection; death) against migrants. They do so because transport companies are obliged to, by legislation of destination states inEurope, North America and Australia. The potential accountability and responsibility of carriers for these harms has not been addressed in literature on human rights law. This article fills this gap through the application of Iris Young’s social connection model to address the contemporary harms of carrier sanctions. We propose that, faced with conflicting legal obligations, carriers have moral and legal obligations to remedy, through strategic actions, the harms to which they contribute. We outline a number of possible practices that carriers can use to do so.
Highlights
Debates on the legal and moral responsibilities of non-state actors have enjoyed widespread interest among scholars from a variety of disciplines.[1]
We introduce Iris Young’s social connection model of accountability and responsibility and consider the contribution of this model to human rights practice in the field of carrier sanctions
Human Rights Leakage What would application of these principles mean for the harm inflicted on insufficiently documented people when they are prevented from boarding airplanes and ferries? We identify five kinds of leaks
Summary
Debates on the legal and moral responsibilities of non-state actors have enjoyed widespread interest among scholars from a variety of disciplines.[1] A central argument in response to this question is that corporations do have moral and legal human rights responsibilities; those responsibilities have been codified in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.[2]. While these debates have been instructive, the literature has so far largely ignored the intersection of migration, corporations, and human rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 126-132. 6 World Bank Data ‘Air transport, passengers carried’, at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR (accessed on 5 November 2018). 7 Statista ‘Worldwide revenue with passengers in air traffic from 2005 to 2019’, at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263042/worldwide-revenue-with-passengers-in-air-traffic/ (accessed on 5 November 2018)
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