Children should not be detained for migration/immigration purposes. There are alternatives, and the International Development Coalition[1] has developed a model for preventing the immigration detention of children, based on three fundamental principles: children who are refugees, asylum seekers or irregular…
Non-discrimination is a founding principle of international human rights law. It is enshrined in a range of international treaties including the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which states that discrimination against women…
Detainees in Sweden's detention centres often express a lack of understanding of why they are being detained. In light of this, the Swedish Red Cross recently examined the implementation of detention legislation, focusing on the justification of the grounds for…
Since 2008 the British government has been deporting young Afghans back to Afghanistan, supporting its forcible return programme with an assistance programme intended to facilitate sustainable reintegration. However, interviews with 50 deportees in 2008 and again in 2011[1] indicated a…
Before the outbreak of conflict, Syria was generally seen to afford the best conditions for Palestine refugees among the nations of the Middle East. Palestinians benefited from relative freedoms, including access to social services provided by the government. Nonetheless, development…
It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods of time a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilised country should willingly tolerate such injustices. Lord T Bingham,…
States have international obligations to ensure that all deprivations of an individual’s liberty are consistent with international human rights law. The majority of provisions in the international human rights law instruments that deal with such deprivations of liberty contain the…
When the walls are closing I feel I can’t win. I have got lost in this life. (asylum seeker in detention, 1998) Approximately 114,473 people (including women and children) were held in immigration detention in Australia between 1997 and 2012.…
High-income countries have been adopting increasingly restrictive immigration policies and practices over the last decade, including the systematic detention of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. Such policies are now implemented by middle- and low-income countries as well (e.g. Mauritania, Libya,…
Over more than ten years of research in Europe and beyond, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented serious violations of children’s rights arising from immigration detention of children.[i] Children may be arbitrarily detained, held in cells with unrelated adults, and…