On 21 March 2020, the Rights Group for Migration (RGM) issued a statement calling on authorities to protect migrants and asylum seekers in detention from the risk of infection. They called, among other measures, for the provision of sterilization and hygiene materials to detention centres as well as isolation rooms; the elimination of overcrowding; and […]
Libya
Physical Fences and Digital Divides: Final Report of the Global Detention Project Special Investigation into the Uses of Electronic Media in Today’s Migration Journeys
The “refugee crisis” helped spur a “tech turn” in how people travel across borders and how governments and others respond to these movements. Everyone from civil society organisations—including the Global Detention Project—and individual activists to humanitarian technologists, government officials, and international bureaucrats have experimented with social media and other new forms of digital technology to […]
Global Detention Project Annual Report 2019
The year 2019 marked the final year of the GDP’s first Strategic Plan. In this Annual Report, we discuss in detail how our strategy has shaped our activities and led us to become more engaged with activists, practitioners, policy-makers, scholars, and—critically—detainees and their families. […]
Submission to the Universal Periodic Review: Libya
Since the beginning of the 2011 civil war in Libya, the country has experienced on-going armed conflict between rival militias and government forces. The resulting lawlessness has enabled armed groups, criminal gangs, smugglers, and traffickers to control much of the flow of migrants, sometimes with the direct backing of Italy and other European countries. As the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recently concluded, “Despite the overwhelming evidence of human rights violations and abuses, Libyan authorities have thus far appeared largely unable or unwilling to put an end to violations and abuses committed against migrants and refugees.” […]
Attack on Libyan Detention Centre an “Appalling Breach of International Law” – UN Network on Migration
In a statement released today, the United Nations Network on Migration has condemned the attack on Tajoura Detention Centre, Tripoli, which has killed at least 40 people and left more than 130 injured. […]
Immigration Detention in Niger: Expanding the EU-Financed Zone of Suffering Through “Penal Humanitarianism”?
Immigration Detention in Niger (2019 Report): Niger has been a principal migration hub for people criss-crossing the Sahel region of Africa for generations. It has also served as an important transit country for migrants and asylum seekers on the Central Mediterranean route through Libya to Europe. More recently, the country has begun receiving third-country nationals who […]
NEWSLETTER: International Women’s Day – Focusing Attention on the Abuses Women Suffer in Immigration Detention
Last week, reports emerged concerning a 24-year-old Honduran woman’s premature labour and subsequent delivery of a stillborn baby while in custody at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre in Texas. While officials were quick to offer the awkward qualification that “for investigative and reporting purposes, a stillbirth is not considered an in-custody death,” the incident nevertheless added fuel to the growing criticism of the Trump administration’s treatment of vulnerable individuals in detention. […]
NEWSLETTER: Immigration Detention: “Never in the Best Interests of Children”
This past summer, people across the globe watched in outrage as children were forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and placed in hastily set up camps and cages. Overlooked in much of the criticism, however, was the fact that children are locked behind bars for immigration-related reasons in dozens of other counties across the globe, all of whom—with the notable exception of the United States—have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. […]
Briefing on Social Media, Human Rights, and Migration
On 15 November, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) and the Global Detention Project (GDP) hosted a briefing and discussion for NGOs, IGOs, and diplomatic missions on the role social media and other new digital technologies play in migration journeys, with a special emphasis on their use in the context of detention and migration control in North Africa and the Mediterranean. […]
Immigration Detention in Libya: “A Human Rights Crisis”
Libya is notoriously perilous for refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, who often suffer a litany of abuses, including at the country’s numerous detention facilities. Conditions at these facilities, many of which are under the control of militias, are deplorable. There are frequent shortages of water and food; over-crowding is endemic; detainees can experience physical mistreatment […]
