Protecting Refugee Rights on the 75th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention

To protect the rights of refugees, states must recall the shared humanity of the Refugee Convention, to address and reverse impediments to the right to seek asylum and access protection and commit to genuine and equitable responsibility sharing in support of an efficient, functioning, and rights-based asylum system. 

1. Ensure access to territory and uphold the right to seek asylum  

Access to territory to seek asylum is a fundamental component of refugee protection. While seeking asylum – regularly or irregularly – is not a crime, many states in host, transit, and destination countries are increasingly tightening border controls, criminalizing ‘unauthorized entry’ and rejecting people seeking international protection, often in violation of the principle of non-refoulement. In order to protect the rights of, and reduce risks for, refugees, DRC calls on states to:  

• End practices that block or deter people seeking protection— including pushbacks, border closures, and externalized asylum processing.  

• Ensure proper training and compliance of border officials in human rights, including the right to seek asylum and the prohibition of refoulement. 

• Enforce accountability for violations of human rights, including the denial of access to asylum procedures and human rights violations at border crossings, and provide legal aid for legal remedies. 

2. Strengthen asylum systems and refugee protection 

Ensuring asylum procedures are in place that function with fairness, efficiency, adaptability, and integrity is paramount to ensure protection outcomes for refugees and displaced populations. Efforts to weaken asylum systems negatively impact the protection of and fair access to refugees’ human and socio-economic rights under the Refugee Convention. To ensure that global asylum systems are best supported to meet the needs of refugees, DRC calls on States to:  

• Support UNHCR’s strategy for strengthening national asylum systems, which DRC advocates is an effective step to counter efforts to weaken or externalize asylum procedures. 

• Properly resource and fund asylum systems to ensure timely and quality decision-making and ensure fairness and efficiency in asylum procedures, including sufficient due process guarantees and access to free and independent legal aid. 

• Support sustainable refugee protection without constant reviews of the legal status. Longer term status/residence permits protect refugees against refoulement and support refugee self-reliance, including options for work and study.   

3. Strengthen and expand safe pathways to protection, including resettlement 

Pathways to international protection are becoming increasingly difficult to access and migration routes increasingly dangerous and deadly, as evidenced by continuing and rising deaths in the Mediterranean. State initiatives to ensure greater access and safer routes must prioritize peoples’ needs without being limited and exclusionary, or undermining responsibility sharing and weaking protection outcomes. To reverse this trend, DRC calls on States to:  

• Increase political commitments for safe and regular pathways in regional and global dialogues and support for those host countries, which take in the vast majority of the world’s refugees, to enhance responsibility sharing of refugee protection. 

• Promote and expand the use of the existing UNHCR resettlement programmes ensuring durable solutions for refugees living under precarious conditions.  

• Expand other safe, regular and accessible pathways for protection – including transit and destination countries – without containment objectives, to protect the rights of refugees, ensure family unity, and serve the best interests of children. 

4. Distinguish between refugee protection and migration management 

Too often messages and policies on refugee protection are conflated with migration management, with grave consequences for the people concerned. People fleeing conflict and persecution often don’t have the luxury of choosing regular pathways to safety, and policies and approaches to refugee protection should reflect this reality. Refugees and forcibly displaced people are best served when pathways and cooperation frameworks work as tools for rights protection and risk reduction, not labour or border management. Therefore, to improve refugee protection in the context of mixed migration, DRC calls on states to: 

• End practices and narratives that enforce the erroneous position that seeking international protection is a crime (even if irregular routes are used following the lack of safe and legal pathways) which is protected by Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. 

• Expand protection and assistance for refugees along migratory routes to mitigate the risks of exploitation, abuse, and human trafficking to which individuals and families are exposed. 

• Avoid using migration management as a conditionality in the provision of humanitarian aid. 

5. Reaffirm the Validity of the Refugee Convention 

Efforts to strengthen protections for refugees must be rooted in the Refugee Convention, as the over-arching legal instrument under which international refugee protection is recognized. As international cooperation deteriorates and an increasing number of UN member states fail to live up to their obligations, states must recommit to this vital life-saving tool and ensure the non-negotiable protections of the Refugee Convention remain intact. Therefore, DRC calls on states to:  

• Demonstrate political will to provide protection for refugees, by reaffirming commitments to the Refugee Convention, ensuring access to asylum and upholding the rights of refugees, and halting discussions on “reopening” or reforming the Convention for the purpose of curtailing the (onward) movements of refugees or undermining refugees’ fundamental rights.  

• Live up to their commitments under the Global Compact on Refugees and promote equitable responsibility-sharing, especially with neighbouring countries to displacement crises, which host 76% of refugees globally. 

• Effectively ensure solidarity with refugees, and states hosting refugees, by creating a welcoming environment where refugees are given agency, can thrive, and become self-sustainable in line with the spirit of the Refugee Convention.