6th Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights highlights risks to deported failed asylum seekers
Published: 13 Oct 2016
Themba Lewis is chief editor of Rights in Exile and a refugee rights advocate with over a decade of experience practicing, promoting, and supporting refugee legal aid around the world. As co-director on Fahamu Refugee Programme and Programme Manager of Rights in Exile, Themba has been involved with the Post-Deportation Monitoring programme since inception.
Between 20 and 22 September 2016, the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN)hosted its 6th refugee rights conference, the Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights, (APCRR6) in Bangkok, Thailand, highlighting post-deportation risks, developments in refugee status determination (RSD) adjudication, and emerging challenges in refugee protection. The conference brought together refugee legal aid organisations, advocates, and other refugee support groups from across the Asia-Pacific region to share best practice, strategise regional priorities, and otherwise cooperate to advance legal protection of refugees and asylum seekers in a geographic region where few countries have dedicated themselves to the legal principles underpinning refugee protection, where arbitrary arrest and detention of asylum seekers is commonplace, and where refoulement of refugees and asylum seekers is not an exceptional occurrence.
This year, for the first time in its history, the assembly dedicated significant time to highlighting risks faced by deportees after being failed by asylum adjudication systems abroad. Demonstrating momentum and interest in the topic, this session came on the heels of the first public acknowledgement of these risks raised at UNHCR Geneva level, as the Post-Deportation Monitoring project presented a segment at the 2016 UNHCR NGO consultations on the topic.
As RSD adjudication systems are stretched and “re-invented”, an increasing number of asylum applicants are subjected to bad determinations – either through expedited processing mechanisms that compromise access to legal support, “safe-country” lists that fundamentally fail to address the evolving and individualised nature of persecution threats, or any number of additional problems. Rejected asylum seekers therefore, whether refugees or not, often face significant risks upon deportation. Not only is claiming asylum abroad considered an act of treason in some countries, short-sighted policies in sending countries often deem refugee applicants who have failed to satisfy increasingly restrictive criteria for refugee protection to face no risk if that high risk threshold is not satisfied: an all or nothing approach demonstrative of cursory approaches to protection. Sending countries may then deport a failed asylum seeker to a hostile environment or persecutory authority – including countries with demonstrated bad practice regarding deportees. Failed asylum seekers therefore may be tortured, mutilated, disappeared, or worse upon “return”.
Concentrating efforts, therefore, on providing support for and maintaining focus on the treatment of deportees is imperative to improving decision making in deporting countries and supporting the protection of individuals deported. Recognising this imperative, APCRR6 hosted an open discussion on post-deportation and post- “voluntary” return support and monitoring.
The open discussion centered around questions of how APRRN members in different countries can better support returnees and deportees and work to ensure protection, as well as inform larger discussions around the risks of deportation. The workshop focused attention around six primary themes: the purpose of post-deportation monitoring, best practice thus far, security and challenges, monitoring, coordination, and outreach. Each of these themes raised particular questions and challenges, including:
- Who will benefit from post-deportation monitoring?
- Are there good practices in post-deportation/post-return monitoring and what are they?
- How do we identify, mitigate, and better address risks post-deportation work may pose to individuals and monitoring organisations?
- What are the practical challenges to monitoring return?
- How do we ensure security of information across organisations?
- How can we better gather evidence highlighting the mistreatment and human rights violations of deportees?
- What does “monitoring” look like?
- How do we effectively build a network able to react quickly across regional/global geography, legal systems, and non-transparent deportation/reception structures such that failed asylum seekers’ and other returnees’ cases “continue” post-deportation?
- Recognising that receiving countries act in variable ways, are there particular core logistical constructions that must be put in place in order to ensure the viability of returns monitoring and in order to act with appropriate ethical and procedural practice?
- “Failed” asylum seekers are not considered “of concern” to UNHCR – what, if any, role for traditional “refugee” organisations?
- Where is there overlap with IDP and stateless work?
The workshop raised more questions than answers – as any initial investigation will do. While a full reporting of the results of the discussion and the conference overall is forthcoming through APRRN, it should be noted that such was the interest in this topic that closing working group discussions highlighted the need to prioritise post-deportation risks as a forefront component element of network-wide legal aid and advocacy strategy for the network over the course of the coming year.