Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB)
Throughout 2021 DRC and six protection and legal aid civil society organizations from six European countries have joined forces in the Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB) initiative.
The PRAB initiative focusses on human rights violations at the EU’s external and internal borders - particularly the illegal practice of pushbacks. Through harmonized data collection methods and building upon the extensive experience and ongoing evidence-based work of different partners, the PRAB initiative aims to:
- Document and collect testimonies of these well-established and systematic rights violations.
- Trigger and support legal action, when relevant and feasible.
- Highlight accountability issues, as well as the need for Independent Border Monitoring mechanisms.
The reports bring together:
- Data on pushbacks, as well as rights violation during these illegal practices, for a multitude of borders at the EU’s internal and external frontiers.
- An overview of increasing protection concerns and a lack of legal pathways.
- Updates on legal venues and relevant jurisprudence.
- Policy recommendations, as good faith is not enough to ensure that border management is human rights compliant.
Pushbacks at EU’s Borders
Pushbacks are expulsions without legal justification and procedure, usually employed by border police, law enforcement officials or other authorities. It is being used to push foreigners such as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from a state’s territory to the territory of another state without regard for the individual’s circumstances and right to seek asylum.
PARTNER ORGANISATIONS
Get the reports
PRAB III: Human dignity lost at the EU’s borders
PRAB III: Human dignity lost at the EU’s borders
December 2021
2 mb
PRAB II: Doors Wide Shut
PRAB II: Doors Wide Shut
July 2021
1.7 mb
PRAB I: Pushing Back Responsibility
PRAB I: Pushing Back Responsibility
April 2021
865.7 kb
PRAB Policy note II: When the ends seems to ‘justify’ the means
December 2021
444.9 kb
PRAB Policy note I: Destruction of property or evidence as tactic
December 2021
418.3 kb
12,000 pushbacks in 2021 reflects worrying normalization of illegal practice
From January to November 2021, DRC and six civil society organizations across Europe documented close to 12,000 incidents of men, women and children being pushed back by border police, law enforcement officials or other authorities from EU Member States.
Using family separation as deterrent – new report documents alarming illegal push-back methods
A new report, Doors Wide Shut, documents how parents are being separated from their children by border authorities and pushed back across the border at different places without means of finding each other again. And this is only one of the illegal push-back practices registered as part of the Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB) Initiative.
Push back of responsibility: Human Rights Violations as a Welcome Treatment at Europe’s Borders
In a new report, DRC in partnership with six civil society organisations across six countries, have collected records of thousands of illegal pushbacks of migrants and refugees trying to cross Europe’s borders. Testimonies also reveal unofficial cooperation between authorities in different countries to transfer vulnerable people across borders to avoid responsibility.