Asylum-Seeking and Externalisation of the Screening Process: Why so Controversial?

Abstract

The recent revival of the EU’s attempts at creating offshore processing centres in North Africa to keep asylum-seekers away from its shores has come under criticism by rights groups as being an infringement on human and refugee rights. Elsewhere, both Australia and the USA have made extensive use of policies at interdiction at sea and offshore processing. While the practice helps avoid asylum-seeker taking risky journeys and falling victims to human traffickers, it carries potential perils of breaching human and refugee rights laws. Further, deplorable conditions in the offshore centres often constitute real threats to life, liberty and welfare of the asylum-seekers. In-country processing, too, has the merits of avoiding unsafe journeys but, absent adequate safeguards, the asylum-seekers remain exposed to retaliatory violence in the origin country.