Human Rights Of Asylum Seekers Research Articles

How Does Climate Change Impact the Human Rights of Asylum Seekers, and What Steps Can Be Taken to Ensure Their Protection and Well-being in the Face of Climate-induced Displacement?

How Does Climate Change Impact the Human Rights of Asylum Seekers, and What Steps Can Be Taken to Ensure Their Protection and Well-being in the Face of Climate-induced Displacement?

The Role of the Serbian Constitutional Court in the Area of Asylum and Migration

The Constitutional Court in Serbia protects the constitutionality and legality of human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the 2006 Constitution. However, its role in asylum- and migration-related matters is limited. There are two reasons for this: the Court very narrowly interprets its own competencies which results in the rejection of the majority of constitutional complaints, and the Court serves as a protector of state authorities rather than a protector of the human rights of asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants. The jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court in this area relates to several matters: the application of a safe third country principle, rights concerning the asylum procedure, and issues relating to the freedom of movement and detention of migrants. Therefore, the Court has been unable to develop clear and coherent practice in this area. However, it is worth noting that the Court invokes relevant standards derived from the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, although the application of those standards usually does not lead to a decision to uphold the constitutional complaint. It also relies on other international sources, such as the UN Refugee Agency reports on specific countries, various United Nations and Council of Europe instruments, and reports of non-governmental organisations. Finally, the Court is not interested in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU), despite the fact that Serbian legislation in this area is inspired by the EU acquis. Serbia is not a member state of the EU, but as a candidate country it is in the process of aligning its own legislation and practice, and referral to the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice would provide guidance on how to interpret domestic provisions, such as subsidiary protection.

Policy Studies Yearbook Annual Review 2022–23: Note from the editor and call for papers

<i>Policy Studies Yearbook Annual Review</i> 2022–23: Note from the editor and call for papers

Storying Manus Women and Girls into Asylum Seeker and PNG Women’s Rights Discourses Surrounding the Manus Regional Processing Centre, 2012–19

ABSTRACT Between 2012 and 2019 two important human rights discourses ran concurrently in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The first involved the rights of asylum seekers detained in Australia’s offshore Regional Processing Centre (RPC) on Manus Island. The second related to PNG women’s and girls’ rights amid the epidemic levels of violence against women and girls in PNG. As the PNG province that hosted the RPC, Manus provides a lens for examining these two rights discourses during this period. In this article I make three arguments. First, the RPC had local gendered impacts. Secondly, there was a gap between these two rights discourses which involved the privileging of the human rights of asylum seekers on Manus. Thirdly, this gap led to the neglect of the RPC’s lasting gendered impacts on the local community. The analytical framework used in this article activates Indigenous narratives of human mobility in order to centre a feminine Manus perspective in relation to these rights discourses.

Canada - A Long Way To Go: The Designated Country of Origin Policy and Refugee Protection

The Designated Country of Origin (DCO) policy was a political response to unwanted migration in Canada. Adapted from Europe, Harper took a liking to the EU’s SCO policy after Canada received a large influx of Middle Eastern and Balkan refugees seeking asylum. He adapted it in Canada, renaming it Designated Country of Origin (DCO). Under the DCO, the government of Canada would decide if a refugee's country of origin was dangerous enough to be considered for asylum. If the asylum seekers country is determined as safe, that person would be disregarded and sent back to their country of origin. Many refugees who had already settled in Canada had their files reopened and were told to return to their country of origin. The DCO policy became an integral part of the refugee status determination process in Canada to which some regarded as faulty, inefficient, and unjust. In 2019, the SCO was deemed unconstitutional and violated The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, wanted to create an asylum system that was considered fair and efficient. While it is important for an asylum seeker to prove they are truthful about the facts of their case, the DCO policy represents a climate of hostility towards migrants in Canada. In this piece, it will be argued that the DCO policy is a discriminatory migration tool used to “weed out” what the government deems as fake migrants. This policy could deny international protection to those who are genuinely in need. The DCO proves that the nation has a misleading reputation of being welcoming to all who come. The DCO threatened the human rights of asylum seekers who sought refuge in Canada.

CONDITIONS, PROBLEMS, AND SOLUTIONS OF ASSOCIATES AND INTERNATIONAL REFUGEES IN INDONESIA IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF NATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

This paper discusses that Indonesia which is not a contracting state to the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, but still respect human rights of asylum seekers and international refugees on the principle of non-refoulement. By being unable to refuse the asylum seekers, it will result in the accumulation of those who have the potential to disturb the security and order of the Indonesian people. This paper aims to identify conditions, problems, and provide solutions for asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesian territory from the perspective of national law and international law. This writing uses a normative research method with a juridical-normative approach, which refers to the prevailing laws and regulations. The solution that can be provided is the establish regulations regarding the handling of asylum seekers and refugees, improving communication with the main destination countries, conduct training for officer in dealing with asylum seekers and refugees, and optimally applying the Global Compact on Refugee concept. The results of this paper indicate that national law and international law can provide protection for asylum seekers and refugees.

Assessing the Relationship between Neoliberal Ideology and Reactions to Central American Asylum Seekers in the United States

AbstractAccording to the United Nations, there are approximately 22.5 million refugees in the world and this number is expected to grow due to war and environmental catastrophe. Additionally, contemporary U.S. society is marked by neoliberal ideology, increasingly coupled with nationalist discourses and policies. Noting the current U.S. sociopolitical context, there is great incentive to study how internalization of neoliberal ideology relates to engagement in efforts to support the rights of refugees. In the current study, we examine the relationships between internalized neoliberal ideology, moral exclusion of people seeking asylum from Central America, levels of ethnocentrism, and willingness to engage in efforts to support the human rights of asylum seekers. Participants (N = 270) were recruited through Prolific Academic and responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings illustrate a strong connection between endorsement of neoliberal ideology and the moral exclusion of Central American asylum seekers, as well as lower levels of willingness to engage in efforts to support the rights of asylum seekers and higher levels of ethnocentrism. Policy implications are discussed.

Playing with lives under the guise of fair play: the safe country of origin policy in the EU and Canada

The safe country of origin (SCO) policy has been implemented by the European Union (EU) and Canada as a way to deal with a backlog of asylum applications, increase efficiency, reduce administrative costs and exclude fraudulent refugee claims. The concept is founded on the assumption that a democratic country with an adequate human rights record is safe for individuals because there is generally no risk of persecution. While this attempt at creating more efficient asylum procedures may seem sensible in theory, an in-depth analysis will reveal that the practice is a prejudicial, exclusionary, and dangerous development that could potentially deny asylum to those who are in genuine need of international protection. Contributing to the existing body of literature, our paper provides a comparative analysis of how SCO is rationalised in Canada and the EU. We argue that the policy is a political response to unwanted migration and a migration management tool used to deter and limit asylum applications from what States deem as 'bogus' refugees, while facilitating the removal of these individuals. Whether these goals have been attained remains debatable. However, as currently applied, the SCO policy is detrimental to the human rights of asylum seekers.

Playing with lives under the guise of fair play: the safe country of origin policy in the EU and Canada

The safe country of origin (SCO) policy has been implemented by the European Union (EU) and Canada as a way to deal with a backlog of asylum applications, increase efficiency, reduce administrative costs and exclude fraudulent refugee claims. The concept is founded on the assumption that a democratic country with an adequate human rights record is safe for individuals because there is generally no risk of persecution. While this attempt at creating more efficient asylum procedures may seem sensible in theory, an in-depth analysis will reveal that the practice is a prejudicial, exclusionary, and dangerous development that could potentially deny asylum to those who are in genuine need of international protection. Contributing to the existing body of literature, our paper provides a comparative analysis of how SCO is rationalised in Canada and the EU. We argue that the policy is a political response to unwanted migration and a migration management tool used to deter and limit asylum applications from what States deem as 'bogus' refugees, while facilitating the removal of these individuals. Whether these goals have been attained remains debatable. However, as currently applied, the SCO policy is detrimental to the human rights of asylum seekers.

Australia and the Nauru files: doctors fighting for the human rights of asylum seekers.

Can doctors successfully challenge the state when medical ethics are crushed by perceived national interest? And if it’s not our own state that’s doing the crushing, should we care? ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ (Martin Luther King Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963) In 2013, desperate to curb arrivals by sea, Australia declared that no asylum seeker arriving by boat would ever settle on Australian soil. Instead, they are sent for ‘offshore processing’ at detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. Even when granted refugee status, they effectively have nowhere to go. The United Nations (UN) call this illegal: Australia’s actions contravene international treaties they have long since signed.1 There are around 1200 asylum seekers on Nauru and 900 on Manus Island, from a variety of Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries. Many are children and conditions are dreadful. Leaked …

Emotion and secrecy in Australian asylum-seeker comics: The politics of visual style

This article examines two online comics about Australia’s policies of detaining asylum seekers, one created by the Australian government’s Customs and Border Protection Service (CBPS), and one published by the experimental journalism site The Global Mail. Through an analysis of the way online readers responded to these comics, this article shows how digital comics use visual style to imply particular kinds of relationships between their authors and their audience, while generating audience engagement through abstracted emotions and narrative gaps. These features have political dimensions, as in the CBPS’s comic, which elides crucial details about the government’s policies while suggesting (but never directly stating) its disregard for the human rights of asylum seekers, while The Global Mail’s comic uses a hand-drawn visual style to generate reader sympathy for the detainees and opposition to the government’s policies. Both comics use visual language to obfuscate key elements about the sources of their messages while also obscuring the voices of the refugees that their images represent.

Human Rights of Asylum Seekers with Psychosocial Disabilities in Europe.

Background:The migrants crossing the Mediterranean towards Europe have dramatically been increased in 2015 as the number of incidents and deathsObjective:This editorial summarizes the results of our work and highlights some critical aspects that hinder the care to asylum seekers with stress disorders.Method:Screening for mental disorders was performed in all migrants joint three camps in Sardinia (January-September 2015) using K6, Short Screening Scale for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and with an interview. Positives were evaluated by psychiatrists and if they needed, have been treated and evaluated at the start of treatment and three months later.Results:22.1% of the sample, (22.6% female, 38.5±12.9 years) were positive for at least one screener; 8.7%, (24% female) had a diagnosis of depressive or bipolar DSM5 disorders and 7.6%, (25% female) of PTSD. After three months of treatment: 51 treated people (26.8%) had left the camps. 53.1% of those remaining declared had relatives in northern Europe that they wanted to reach. Only 8.3% showed a significant clinical improvement.Conclusion:Clinical improvement was dramatically poor in people who stay in the camps. Dissatisfaction and feeling they could not join relatives may have had a negative impact. In PTSD, with the experience of torture and seeing family members killed, staying with surviving relatives in stable conditions would be an important part of treatment. From this point of view the UE Dublin Regulation seems not to be in agreement with the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities

Commentary: Fractured Families: US Asylum Backlog Divides Parents and Children Worldwide

This commentary focuses on the detrimental effects of the US asylum backlog on families around the world. It puts a spotlight on the backlog of the 82,175 individuals who are currently (as of March 2015) waiting to have their asylum cases heard. These individuals fleeing torture, political persecution, or persecution due to their race, religion, ethnicity, or membership in a particular social group are especially vulnerable. We identify the essential human rights of asylum seekers who are children and their family members, including the right to seek asylum, the right of family members to be protected from harm, and the right to family life, family unity, and reunification. Throughout, the principle of what is in the best interest of the child is highlighted. Using the example of how resources have been shifted to process the cases of Central American families crossing the US southern border, the authors question the effectiveness of a crisis-focused US immigration policy. We call for broad immigration reform in the USA with resulting policies that do not focus on the needs and rights of one group of vulnerable children at the expense of another. Thus, we call for an immigration policy that puts the rights of all children at its center.

Mental distress and human rights of asylum seekers

Purpose – This paper studies the experiences of asylum seekers in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between mental wellbeing, living conditions, and Australia’s detention policies in light of human rights. Design/methodology/approach – Using grounded theory, data were collected via observations, semi-structured interviews, key-informant interviews, and document analysis. Participants included seven asylum seekers and three professionals working with them. Findings – In light of a human rights framework, this paper reports on the mental distress suffered by asylum seekers in detention, the environments of constraint in which they live, and aspects of detention centre policy that contribute to these environments. The findings highlight a discrepancy between asylum seekers’ experiences under immigration detention policy and Australia’s human rights obligations. Research limitations/implications – This research indicates human rights violations for asylum seekers in detention in Australia. This research project involved a small number of participants and recommends systemic review of the policy and practices that affect asylum seekers’ mental health including larger numbers of participants. Consideration is made of alternatives to detention as well as improving detention centre conditions. The World Health Organization’s Quality Rights Tool Kit might provide the basis for a framework to review Australia’s immigration detention system with particular focus on the poor mental wellbeing of asylum seekers in detention. Originality/value – This study links international human rights law and Australian immigration detention policies and practices with daily life experiences of suffering mental distress within environments of constraint and isolation. It identifies asylum seekers as a vulnerable population with respect to human rights and mental wellbeing. Of particular value is the inclusion of asylum seekers themselves in interviews.

"Systemic Deficiency": Legal Standard Setting, Human Rights, and Its Effect on the Individual in the Common European Asylum System

By looking at two judgments adjudicating Dublin–II–removals to Italy and Greece, this paper finds that setting the standard of “systemic deficiency” as a test in order to stop removals to countries within the Common European Asylum System is demonstrative of a clash between the sovereign interest and the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees. Drawing from Judith Butler’s concepts of ‘vulnerability’ and grievability’, law and rulings will be placed on a broader socio–political context. Through the standard of “systemic deficiency” a hierarchy of suffering based on “grievability” is created. “Systemic deficiencies” thereby impact local suffering and thus the lives of individual asylum seekers and refugees. Legal debate tends to often be reserved for lawyers and law scholars. Through our paper, we aim to broaden the scope of legal analysis by recognizing the value of analyzing legal frameworks from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences that underlie its reasoning. We thus aim to present a theoretical insight into the debate around law and asylum and so provide an integrated legal analysis, researching the material conditions of refugees and asylum seekers in Italy and Greece. By doing so, we hope to reach a broad audience, opening legal analysis up to scholars of neighbouring disciplines.

Seeking Asylum—Trauma, Mental Health, and Human Rights: An Australian Perspective

Asylum seekers represent a highly traumatized group with experiences of systematic oppression, loss, displacement, and exposure to violence. Around the world many are viewed with distrust and anxiety. The Australian response to asylum seekers is one that has used prolonged detention with significant negative impact on mental health. This has prompted much social debate and the involvement of clinicians and researchers in advocating for the human rights of asylum seekers. This article reviews the impact of mandatory prolonged detention on the mental health of asylum seekers and the significance of this for recovery and adaption. It concludes that the mandatory detention of high-risk and oppressed groups compounds trauma, with a potential long-term negative impact on mental health.

Protection of human rights of asylum seekers and illegal migrants: Practice of European court of human rights

The European Court of Human Rights plays an important role in protecting the rights of asylum seekers and illegal migrants through a set of different human rights. Requests for interim measures under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court have also great importance. In cases involving illegal migrants and asylum-seekers, the Court was often in a difficult position, given the contradictions that could arise from the protection of human rights and the legitimate aim of the Contracting States to control the entry, residence and expulsion of aliens. The recent Courts judgments in the case of M. S. S. against Belgium and in the case of Jama Hirsi and others v. Italy are particularly important because of their remarkable influence on the perception of the common asylum system in the EU.

Australian funded care and maintenance of asylum seekers in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea : all care but no responsibility?

The different Regional Cooperation Agreements (RCAs) that Australia has prevalent for the care and maintenance of asylum seekers in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are discussed. The realization that it is theoretically accountable under international law for the impacts that the RCAs have on the human rights of asylum seekers will hopefully have an impact on Australia's future conduct.

Constitutional and Human Rights Disturbances: Australia’s Privative Clauses Created Both in an Immigration Context

With the arrival of another wave of “boat people” to Australian waters in late 2009, issues of human rights of asylum seekers and refugees once again became a major feature of the political landscape. Claims of “queue jumping” were made, particularly by some sections of the media, and they may seem populist, but they are also ironic, given the protracted efforts on the part of the federal government to stymie any orderly appeals process, largely through resort to “privative clauses”. Such clauses demonstrate the many ways in which human rights of those seeking asylum in far-off lands and are potential future immigrants, who often lack much-touted needed papers, yet who are for the most part genuine refugees, are subject to the slings and arrows of political fortune (and misfortune). Approaching the courts if treated unfairly or seeking a further decision as to your fate would seem one of the fundamental premises of human rights. Yet privative clauses—or attempts to ouster the jurisdiction of the courts and to insulate decisions from appeal—have become an increasingly frequent feature of the Australian migration legislation. With a seemingly watertight federal constitutional power set in stone since 1901, to deal with migration and aliens, and without the tempered contemporary update of a federal Bill of Rights, the Australian federal government has been able to narrow the grounds of judicial review in those contexts. We argue that the concerted efforts to deny such fundamental rights of appeal to those most in need of the full armoury of the protection of the law in a modern, affluent democracy, constitutes both a breach of their human rights and a breach of core constitutional principles such as separation of powers. Those principles may not be formally articulated in the text of the Australian Constitution, but in our view they are implicit in the constitutional arrangements, and hence we can conclude with the arguments of former Justice of the High Court of Australia, Michael Kirby, who asked—to whom does sovereignty truly belong?

Between state sovereignty and invisibility: monitoring the human rights of returned asylum seekers

In few domains do states assert sovereignty as vigorously as in the control and regulation of borders and territory to migration movements. Moreover, such regulation is particularly evident in the case of asylum migration, often also considered a security threat to the state. This article explores the human rights of asylum seekers who are subject to removal and return from Western states. The article argues that these individuals can be left without rights through the practice of removal and return. The evident gap in establishing the legitimacy of return is seen in the absence of adequate monitoring of individuals after their removal from one state and return to another. The role of non-government organisations is explored as one of many ‘organisational actors’ necessary to a robust global human rights system.