36. First supplementary memorandum
submitted by The Refugee Council
REFUGEE COUNCIL
COMMENTS ON
THE MEMORANDUM
SUBMITTED BY
THE RT
HON OLIVER
LETWIN MP
1. The Refugee Council is the largest non-governmental
organisation supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the UK
and promoting refugee rights in the UK and abroad. Our members
range from small refugee-run community organisations to international
NGOs, such as Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam.
2. This note contains our initial comments
on the proposal to establish a quota-based system for refugees.
As a result of the short time-scale for comment this note should
not be considered as our full position on the proposals. Rather,
it outlines our initial thoughts.
3. Mr Letwin's proposal is in many ways
similar to the Government's proposals, outlined in the Home Office
paper "UK proposals on zones of protection: new international
approaches to asylum processing and protection.'"Our concerns
with the establishment of offshore asylum processing centres are
set out in the attached Refugee Council position paper "Unsafe
havens, unworkable solutions". These concerns can be summarised
as:
(i) Offshore processing centres are unprincipled
and threaten to unravel the global safety net provided by the
1951 Refugee Convention.
(ii) They are legally problematic
and will lead to a raft of expensive and lengthy judicial challenges
in the UK and elsewhere.
(iii) They are unworkable and will
result in the creation of "super-Sangattes" that will
become overwhelmed by the rapid growth in resident populations
as targets for returns are missed.
(iv) Overseas processing centres will be
expensive; the cost of establishing the centres and deporting
tens of thousands of people to and from them will be prohibitively
high.
4. The key difference between Mr Letwin's
paper and the government's proposals is the idea of setting a
maximum quota for refugees to be accepted every year. In this
respect, Mr Letwin seeks to abandon the current international
protection system based on rights enshrined in international law,
and to return to dependence on state discretion. During the first
half of the last century, when it was up to states whether to
offer protection, thousands of people fleeing Nazi persecution
were denied access to sanctuary and sent back to face persecution.
It was precisely because of such failures that the 1951 Refugee
Convention was established, setting out the obligations of states
towards asylum seekers and refugees.
5. It is proposed that those people processed
in offshore centres who are found to have protection needs would
be readmitted to the UK as part of the quota for the following
year. Large numbers of people would therefore be left in limbo
for extended periods of time. The Refugee Council's analysis of
the Government's proposals for offshore centres indicates that
the centres would have to be closed and residents detained within
them. Mr Letwin's proposals are similar and would also be likely
to require closed centres if the proposals were to work as envisaged.
Detention for little more than administrative convenience would
violate international human rights law, including Article 5 of
the European Convention on Human Rights.
6. Mr Letwin states that refugees entering
the country as part of a quota will be "brought here in an
orderly manner, and . . . consequently deserve our tolerance and
respect". The implication of this statement is that asylum
seekers who arrive in the UK spontaneously do not deserve such
tolerance and respect. The 1951 Convention specifically recognises
that refugees are often not able to obtain proper documentation
for travel and are thus forced to enter countries of asylum illegally.
The 1951 Convention stipulates that refugees should not be penalised
for such illegal entry. It is unacceptable to hold that spontaneous
arrivals to the UK deserve to be treated with any less tolerance
or respect than those who arrive as part of any managed resettlement
scheme.
7. The proposals may be counterproductive
and discourage people, including those with well-founded claims,
from claiming asylum, instead driving them underground. This could
further sour the immigration debate, fuel social exclusion, hamper
the UK's security objectives, deprive the country of tax revenues
and damage community relations.
8. As Mr Letwin makes clear, his proposal
is at the earliest stage of development. However, it raises a
series of fundamental questions that the Refugee Council believes
require consideration before the proposal is developed any further:
(i) The proposal would threaten the global
safety net and send a dangerous signal to the rest of the world
about the UK's commitment to its international, European and domestic
legal obligations. Many countries would be keen to use the UK's
precedent as an excuse to renege on their own obligations. Is
the UK prepared to undermine the international protection regime,
which could severely damage the UK's own interests in maintaining
a reputation for commitment to human rights and in fostering an
orderly world governed by the rule of law?
(ii) Refugee flows cannot be predicted and
fluctuate widely. If the UK establishes a refugee quota of 20,000,
other countries, including those developing countries that currently
host 70% of the world's refugees, may well follow suit and establish
their own quotas. If every country had a refugee quota and the
total quota amounted to less than the number of people in need
of international protection, what would happen to refugees falling
outside the total quota?
(iii) What evidence is there that sending
asylum seekers to an unattractive location will act as a deterrent
to economic migrants using the asylum system?
(iv) The proposal does not detail the numerous
components of international law that define the UK's obligations
to asylum seekers and refugees. It does, however, in general terms
propose a recasting of Britain's relationship to international
treaties and conventions. In our opinion such recasting, for example
in relation to the European Convention on Human Rights and the
1951 Refugee Convention, is both undesirable and unlikely to succeed.
Exactly which international treaties and conventions would the
proposal seek to change, and how would they be recast?
(v) Under the proposal asylum seekers arriving
spontaneously would be sent to offshore processing centres for
their claims to be considered. If the populations in processing
centres are not to grow inexorably, all failed claimants will
have to be returned to their countries of origin. Yet the difficulties
involved in enforcing removals are well documented and include
lack of travel documents, non-co-operation of countries of origin,
and a lack of routes to countries of origin. How the populations
in processing centres be prevented from growing beyond a manageable
size?
(vi) It is unclear why the proposal assumes
that, were it to be implemented, "the number of spontaneous
arrivals would be at or below the 8,000 recognised by the courts
as incoming refugees in Britain last year". We should be
interested to know the rationale behind such an assumption. We
would also like to remind the Committee that, as outlined in their
asylum removals report, 42,000 people were found in 2001 to be
in need of protection and granted asylum or exceptional leave
to remain.
(vii) The proposals make no mention of screening
asylum seekers before sending them to the offshore processing
centres. Is the proposal that even asylum seekers with special
needs, such as minors, disabled people and survivors of torture
would be deported from the UK? If not, a screening system would
have to be established and a domestic asylum processing system
retained to process such cases. How would screening processes
be devised that are sensitive enough to detect torture survivors
and others whose vulnerability is not always immediately apparent?
13 June 2003
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