05/18/2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The right of asylum, a fundamental human rights protection, is under assault.

• President Bush, worried about a possible new flood of Haitian refugees, recently vowed to “turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore.”   Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. has used national security concerns to tighten restrictions and those not forced back at sea remain confined.

• Australia applies a “Pacific Solution” which bars asylum seekers from reaching the continent.

• New Dutch laws may lead to the separation of families and possible forced return of up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers.

• These states, and an estimated 70 others, have failed their international obligation to prevent people seeking asylum for persecution from being forced back to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened before they receive adequate hearings of their pleas for protection.  

Many of the hundreds of thousands of individuals prevented from claiming asylum each year will face danger and possibly death.  Based on  field missions to border areas of China, Thailand, India, Panama, and Burundi, Refugees International (RI) concludes that forced return continues to be a widespread problem that puts the lives of refugees from numerous regions at risk.  RI’s new report, Forced Back:  International Refugee Protection in Theory and Practice, documents the initial outcome of 26 survivors that includes harsh treatment, imprisonment, and even possible death.  It also outlines the international agreements and institutions that are meant to prevent the return of refugees to situations of danger, and offers recommendations for bolstering the practice of international refugee protection.

Access to asylum is a right that is increasingly abrogated.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”  The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees asserts “No contracting state shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion.”  “There needs to be a better system to identify individuals truly in need of international protection”, says Kenneth H. Bacon, RI’s President.  “People fleeing persecution need and are entitled to international protection.   Lives depend on it.”

Refugees International was founded 25 years ago when Sue Morton, an American living in Asia, galvanized an international response to the push-back of some 40,000 Cambodian refugees from the Thai border.  It was not an isolated problem. Over the last decade and a half alone some 2.4 million individuals have been denied access to fair refugee determination procedures, making it impossible to know whether individuals have been returned to face persecution or torture. 

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Refugees International generates lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection for displaced people around the world, and works to end the conditions that create displacement. RI does not accept any government or UN funding.