Immigration detention in Lebanon: Although Lebanon does not consider itself a country of asylum, it has the world’s highest per-capita concentration of refugees, most of whom have fled conflict in neighbouring Syria. Refugees are increasingly treated as a security threat and economic burden, and they have found themselves under growing surveillance and restrictions. The country is […]
Lebanon
Kidnapped, Trafficked, Detained? The Implications of Non-state Actor Involvement in Immigration Detention
This article critically assesses a range of new non-state actors who have become involved in the deprivation of liberty of migrants and asylum seekers, describes the various forces that appear to be driving their engagement, and makes a series of recommendations concerning the role of non-state actors and detention in global efforts to manage international migration. […]
Detention Norms and Lebanon
On 17 November Izabella Majcher gave a training session titled “Freedom of Movement and Restrictions thereof, including Detention” as part of the International Refugee Law Course for Lebanese officials organized by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and UNHCR in Sanremo, Italy. […]
There and Back Again: On the Diffusion of Immigration Detention
From Mexico to the Bahamas, Mauritania to Lebanon, Turkey to Saudi Arabia, South Africa to Indonesia, Malaysia to Thailand, immigration-related detention has become an established policy apparatus that counts on dedicated facilities and burgeoning institutional bureaucracies. Until relatively recently, however, detention appears to have been largely an ad hoc tool, employed mainly by wealthy states in exigent circumstances. This paper uses concepts from diffusion theory to detail the history of key policy events in several important immigration destination countries that led to the spreading of detention practices during the last 30 years and assesses some of the motives that appear to have encouraged this phenomenon. […]