Publications
Published: 14 Jul 2016
“Additionally, this report confirms the existence of local lockup quotas for families at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas and the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. The local quota at Berks is an entirely new discovery, and it stands out as one of the four guaranteed minimums found in public contracts where no private subcontractor is implicated. The presence of a local quota at Karnes was noted in the original publication of Banking on Detention, but it was unclear whether the local quota remained operative after the facility was converted from an all-male facility to a family detention centre in 2014. However, through the review of a newly available 2015 contract, we can now confirm the continuation of the guaranteed minimum. Thus, at least one private company, The Geo Group, Inc. (GEO), is benefiting from a local lockup quota to detain mothers and children.” Banking on Detention 2016 Update. Detention Watch Network and Center for Constitutional Rights. 2016
“As of January 2016, all relocation requests from Kigali to Mahama camp had been addressed but from February onwards, demand spiked, following the statement made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pertaining to the relocation of Burundians, misinterpreted by many urban refugees as an opportunity for resettlement, for the inhabitants of Mahama. Given shelter constraints in Mahama camp, it became necessary to prioritise the most vulnerable cases. Since 22 March, case by case assessments are organised in order to better understand urban refugees’ motivations for relocation. Among those received, the majority expressed the wish to find more attractive livelihoods opportunities in Mahama. UNHCR has clearly explained to the Government of Rwanda, the political, operational, logistical and financial challenges surrounding its request for relocation of Burundian refugees.” Burundi Situation: UNHCR Regional Update 24, 15-31 March 2016. UNHCR. 31 March 2016.
“Effective return, readmission and reintegration policies for those not qualifying for protection are an essential part of combating irregular migration and will help discourage people from risking their lives. Increasing the rate of return will lead to breaking the business model of smugglers, so that people realise that paying large sums of money to reach the European Union (EU) in perilous conditions is not worth the risk. The effect of increasing rates of returns will be multiplied if, in addition, legal routes to the EU are created.” Communication from the commission to the European parliament, the European council, the council and the European investment bank on establishing a new Partnership Framework with third countries under the European Agenda on Migration. European Commission. 7 June 2016.
“Refugees generally expressed confidence in the work done by local leaders and believe they understand their problems better than the police. Refugee Welfare Council members are elected by refugees themselves. In principle they are chosen because they communities trust them and believe they can represent and serve them effectively. They also share past experience of conflict and as such are assumed to understand the community issues better…Language barriers that are a major hindrance to access to justice in formal systems, particularly the court, are not a hindrance for refugees seeking justice in the informal system. Respondents stated that they prefer these structures because they use customs and languages which are well known by the people.” “Courts can never solve problems in the community!” A Study of informal justice structures in refugee settlements in Uganda. Alauterio Ntegyerize and Charity Ahumuza Onyoin. Refugee Law Project. 2016.
“Contrary to Frontex forecasts, migrants’ crossings continued unabated, thus proving the assumptions that led to the demise of Mare Nostrum to be tragically wrong. However, as a result of the retreat of state-led assets, an increasing number of migrants were left to drift for several hours or even days before being detected and before rescue means, now located much further away from the area where most SAR events were happening, managed to reach them.” Death by Rescue: The Lethal Effects of the EU’s Policy of Non-Assistance. Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani.
“The tri-partite agreement governing the use of the Timisoara Emergency Transit Centre (ETC) allows the host country to suspend the arrival of new cases if more than 20 refugees overstay the permitted six-month period. The suspension clause was activated twice. However, this lasted for a very short period of time as the resettlement country expedited the refugees’ departure. Reasons for delays have been: rejection by resettlement countries, security clearances, and expired medical clearances. The ETCs have been utilised by nine resettlement countries: the United States, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Refugees evacuated to ETCs are primarily of Somali, Palestinian and Iraqi origin.” Evaluation of Emergency Transit Centres in Romania and the Slovak Republic. UNHCR. August 2015.
“UK Home Office and UNHCR guidelines warn against assessing credibility of the applicant’s religious beliefs or conversion through questions that focus on religious knowledge. However, in all submissions to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and the Asylum Advocacy Group, there is a clear pattern of decision-makers using knowledge-testing at interview, with an absence of cases where decision-makers had pursued a line of questioning to establish the personal narrative of the applicant, including their feelings and experience of their religious faith.” Fleeing persecution: Asylum claims in the UK on religious freedom grounds. Freedom Declared. 7 June 2016.
“However, the incidents leading to solitary confinement in Essex, US, show that solitary confinement is used disproportionately as a punitive disciplinary measure for all types of conduct, even minor non-violent conduct. As noted in part II, of the 329 incident reports that lead to convictions, solitary confinement was used as the punishment in 316, or 96% percent, of cases. Of those 316 cases, 42.1% of all convictions were for non-violent conduct, which often do not give rise to any perceived or real threat. This all-purpose use of solitary confinement for the whole range of facility violations contradicts even Essex’s own rules, which provides a wide range of alternatives to solitary confinement for these types of offences. At a minimum, the high rate of the imposition of solitary confinement demonstrates that it is used as a punishment of first resort rather than last resort.” Isolated in Essex: Punishing immigrants through solitary confinement. American Friends Service Committee. 21 June 2016.
“When Lesbian Gay Bisexual and/or Transgender (LGBT) asylum seekers are unable to safely and confidentially disclose their sexual orientation and/or gender identity during initial screening processes, they may effectively be denied access to asylum protection when their status is disclosed at a later time. This problem is even more acute for LGBT persons whose non-disclosure or late disclosure may be the result of feelings of shame, internalised LGBT discrimination, or an inability to name or conceptualise their identity as LGBT, especially if they have not done so previously. Inadequate vulnerability screenings of asylum seekers have resulted in large numbers of individuals being returned to unsafe environments, including to states where persons are criminalised by their sexual orientation and/or gender identity or otherwise places their lives in danger.” LGBTI Persons in Immigration Detention. International Detention Coalition. 14 June 2016.
“As a result of a policy vacuum both at the European Union (EU) level and nationally (in both Italy and Greece), policy responses appear to be driven largely by improvisation by both national and local agencies. Faced with an unprecedented humanitarian challenge, coupled with the blurred responsibilities of state agencies and the bureaucratic culture of blame avoidance, authorities fail to respond effectively to the problem. Different agencies are tasked to deal with different elements of the issue (i.e. recovery, investigation, identification, burial, and repatriation of the dead body) with minimal or no coordination. For example, we have significant evidence to suggest that even though DNA samples are taken from dead bodies in Greece, the prospect of future identification is minimised as a result of the lack of coordination between the different authorities. For example, there is no data management in place to link a body buried in Lesbos’ graveyard to a DNA sample held in Athens.“ Missing migrants and managing dead bodies in the Mediterranean: A briefing note. The Mediterranean Missing research project. June 2016.
“Asylum applications from main applicants increased by 38% to 34,687 in the year ending March 2016, the highest number of applications since the year ending September 2004 (36,305). The largest number of applications for asylum came from nationals of Iran (4,305), followed by Eritrea (3,321), Iraq (2,805), Sudan (2,769), Pakistan (2,669) and Syria (2,539). Including dependants, the number of asylum applications increased by 30% to 41,563 in the year ending March 2016.” National Statistics: Asylum. UK Home Office, 26 May 2016.
“Though the number of Burundian refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is small by comparison to other refugee crises, the context into which they have arrived is highly volatile and requires a robust humanitarian protection response. Like much of the DRC, Uvira and Fizi territories are profoundly ill-suited to host refugees. State control and capacity in these territories are limited, with local security forces often a source of insecurity for the population. Social services are barely functioning to nonexistent, and standards of living are extremely low. Further, more than 50,000 Congolese in these two territories are internally displaced, with more than 360,000 IDPs in South Kivu province as a whole.” No Respite: Burundian refugees in the DR Congo. Michael Boyce and Mark Yarnell. Refugees International. 26 May 2016.
“Security forces regularly arrested dozens of people at each protest, and in many locations security forces went door-to door-at night arresting students and those accommodating students in their homes. Security forces also specifically targeted for arrest those perceived to be influential members of the Oromo community, such as musicians, teachers, opposition members and others thought to have the ability to mobilise the community for further protests. Many of those arrested and detained by the security forces have been children under age 18. Security forces have tortured and otherwise ill treated detainees, and several female detainees described being raped by security force personnel. Very few detainees have had access to legal counsel, adequate food, or to their family members.” Such a brutal crackdown: Killings and arrests in response to Ethiopia’s Oromo protests. Human Rights Watch. 16 June 2016.
“UN Refugee Agency study finds the number of people in need of resettlement far surpasses the opportunities for placement in a third country.” The Projected Global Resettlement Needs 2017. UNHCR. June 2016.
“Downplaying atrocity crimes is a central element of Mexico’s history of impunity. A government that does not want to recognise disappearances, killings, and torture – especially by state actors – obscures data on the extent of these crimes. Families have looked on in frustration and anger as government officials have counted disappearances with incomplete data or unclear criteria, and then announced wildly divergent estimates of the disappeared. The government has made virtually no systematic attempts to locate clandestine or mass graves, or to exhume and account for the bodies in the scores of the graves that have been found across the country. Similarly, statistics on torture often come from the very agencies implicated in committing these offenses.” Undeniable atrocities: Confronting crimes against humanity in Mexico. Open Society Foundation. June 2016.
“Civilians continue to be severely affected by the conflict, with reports of civilians being killed and injured in conflict-related violence, widespread sexual and gender-based violence against women and children, forced recruitment of children, and large-scale displacement. Government forces, African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops and clan militia are reported to be responsible for grave human rights violations including killings, rape, other forms of sexual abuse and violence, and sexual exploitation.” UNHCR Position on Returns to Southern and Central Somalia (Update 1). UNHCR. May 2016.
“Five of the families seen so far by the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project (CARA Project) were never referred to the immigration court to consider their claims for asylum or other legal relief. Instead, US Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested them to execute expedited removal or reinstatement of removal orders, issued not by an immigration judge but by an enforcement officer at the border. Despite ICE’s representation that all of the targets of this operation had been ordered removed by an immigration judge, these families never were, and they had no opportunity to present their asylum claims in court.” Update on recent ICE enforcement actions targeting Central American families. CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project.
“In recent years, overall refugee volume is hovering at median levels historically. The number of refugees experienced a dramatic dip following the passing of the U.S.A Patriot Act in 2001 – fewer than 30,000 refugees were let into the US each year in 2002 and 2003, down 60% from the pre-9/11 level in 2001.” Where refugees to the US come from. Ruth Igielink. Pew Research Center. 17 June 2016.