Externalizing Refugee Protection: Less a Vision Than a Mirage

The UK’s ‘New Plan for Immigration’ allows the government to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, reflecting the latest aspiration to externalize refugee protection. But Britain’s attempt to externalize refugee protection is by no means a new idea. Countries worldwide have toyed with it for years – and failed consistently.

In mid-April 2022, Britain announced the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda. Home Secretary Priti Patel claimed it was a ‘new world-leading solution’ for managing migration. The bilateral agreement allows the UK to send asylum seekers to the East African country for claims processing and subsequent protection. Essentially, the UK government has offered £120 million as an upfront investment in exchange for Rwanda assuming legal responsibility for Britain’s asylum seekers.

Externalization includes a wide range of measures that aim to prevent people seeking protection from accessing national territory and asylum procedures. Often, externalization is based on the idea of extraterritorial processing of asylum claims and the provision of protection in another country.

But Britain’s New Plan for Immigration is not new at all. Rather, it builds on a longstanding desire to externalize asylum. In fact, the idea first arose in the field of asylum governance in the 1980s. And even though externalization has fallen well short in safeguarding national interests and securing refugee protection, it retains an almost irresistible allure for political leaders worldwide.

European Externalization Desires

In 1986, Denmark became the first European country to recommend externalizing asylum procedures. Tabling a proposal at the UN General Assembly, Denmark advocated UNHCR-run processing centers in regions of origin and resettlement among UN member states under a quota system. However, its ambitious proposal lacked support from other countries and the government quickly shelved it.

The idea gained new traction in 2003, when Britain’s then prime minister, Tony Blair, announced a ‘new vision for refugees.’ Blair’s plan revived the idea of processing asylum claims beyond EU borders. It also proposed a quota scheme for allocating refugees. A year later, Germany’s interior minister, Otto Schily, backed a similar plan to open EU reception centers in North Africa. However, both plans were dismissed as impracticable and failed to attract support.

The idea of externalizing asylum returned to the EU political agenda in the shadow of the 2015 refugee protection crisis. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an extension of the EU ‘hotspot’ approach to examine asylum claims in North Africa. A year later, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz argued for setting up centers for persons who have not been granted refugee status outside the EU. However, the number of asylum applicants dwindled, and criticisms persisted that North African centers were unfeasible. As a consequence, these plans also failed to take off.

Externalization Processing Overseas

Since the 1980s, the US has practiced externalization by the interdiction of boats and pre-screening procedures on the high seas. In 1991, the military facilities in Guantanamo Bay held people fleeing Haiti for screening procedures in offshore detention. Facing impending overcrowding, an executive order by President GHW Bush in 1992 saw thousands of Haitians returned to Haiti.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton reopened the Guantanamo processing facility, in response to a high influx of people fleeing Cuba. Only in the early 2000s was Guantanamo repurposed as a prison in the ‘war on terror.’ Since 2017, the detention center has not held migrants, but the Biden Administration has considered it for such use in the future.

Australia’s externalization program, dubbed the ‘Pacific Solution,’ was launched in 2001. The program involved arresting asylum seekers at sea and removing them to detention and processing facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG). If recognized as refugees, people could be resettled to Australia. When a new government took office in 2007, it terminated the program.

From Processing to Protection

Based on new bilateral agreements with Nauru and PNG, Australia revived the ‘Pacific Solution’ in 2012. These new agreements no longer included resettlement to Australia. In 2011, Australia’s High Court struck down a preceding deal permitting to send asylum seekers to Malaysia. A subsequent agreement allowing refugees to move from Nauru to Cambodia resulted in the transfer of just ten people. In 2021, Australia stopped sending asylum seekers to PNG. Nauru is still in use, despite widespread allegations of abuse.

The Trump Administration closed deals with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to deport undocumented migrants for processing and protection. The Biden administration terminated these deals in 2021. Israel had a ‘voluntary departure program,’ under which 4,000 asylum seekers were transferred to Uganda and Rwanda after 2014. This scheme, likewise, was shuttered after Rwandan authorities refused to accept forced deportations.

Denmark was the first European country to stray from the multilateral path. In 2021, it passed legislation allowing the transfer of asylum seekers to another country. While previous European externalization plans included resettlement of recognized refugees to Europe, the new proposal aimed at total externalization. Currently, Denmark is in negotiations with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there.

Continuous Failure and Enduring Appeal

Plans to externalize refugee protection face intense criticism from academics, politicians, and NGOs for generating high costs and poor human rights records. The African Union and the UNHCR claim that the attempt to transfer responsibility for refugee protection to other countries runs counter to the spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Global Compact of Refugees.

Britain’s ‘New Plan for Immigration’ reflects the shift in the externalization idea. Such ideas are no longer grounded on multilateral approaches for extraterritorial processing. Rather, they are based on bilateral agreements, extending to permanent protection. In this way, the plan signals a change from seeking to share responsibility multilaterally to shifting responsibility to single states.

Despite the global spread of policies restricting access to asylum, only a handful of countries have put into practice plans to externalize refugee protection. The UK’s current attempt marks the latest chapter in a long story marked by wild aspiration and continual failure. And while the vision seems resistant to the absence of any proof of concept, externalizing refugee protection remains as much a mirage today as it ever was.

This blog post was adapted from “the Loop” article published on May 9, 2022. All rights reserved.

Frowin Rausis is a doctoral student and researcher at the University of Lucerne associated with the nccr – on the move in the project on “The Mobility of Migration Policies: Pathways and Consequences of the Diffusion of Migration Policies.”

Konstantin Kreibich is a research assistant at the University of Lucerne.