Detained during a Pandemic: Human Rights behind Locked Doors

Every year, thousands of people are detained in United States immigration detention centers. Built to prison specifications and often run by private companies, these detention centers have long been criticized by academics and advocacy groups. Problems such as overcrowding and lack of access to basic healthcare and legal representation have plagued individuals in detention centers for years. These failings have been illuminated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted detained migrants. Against a human rights backdrop, this article will examine how the U.S. immigration detention system has proven even more problematic in the context of the pandemic and offer insights to help avoid similar outcomes in the future

Rule of law: a new framework to challenge immigration detention policies in Australia

As of 30 September 2013, there were a staggering 9,644 people in immigration detention in Australia, the vast majority of whom arrived in Australia without a visa by plane or by boat. Of those 9,644 people being detained, 6,403 were in high security prison-like facilities.  In addition, since August 2012, when the government reinstituted a policy of off-shore detention and processing in Nauru and Manus Island, hundreds of asylum seekers have been transferred to temporary facilities in these locations. The Australian law, policy and practice of mandatory immigration detention, first established in 1992, has been the subject of regular criticism from the UNHCR, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and non-government organisations with a concern for human rights such as Amnesty International and Oxfam. Despite this human rights-based criticism, the government has not been swayed to change its policy. There is an alternative framework through which to view Australia’s immigration detention policy: the framework of the rule of law. This framework promises more than just human rights protection. In Europe, the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law in London recently published a new report analysing immigration detention against rule of law principles.Image: Nata-Lia / shutterstoc

Strengthening the Rule of Law in the EU: The Council's Inaction

In May 2014 the Legal Service of the Council delivered an opinion on the European Commission's Rule of Law Framework, stating the Commission's new mechanism was unlawful. This article sets out a critical analysis of this opinion, and questions whether the annual rule of law dialogue announced by the Council in December 2014 is a feasible response. Hungary is used as a case study to highlight the total failure of the Council to take any action whatsoever in the face of the grave and systemic abuses of human rights committed by the government of that country since 2010; and Poland where an autocratic regime has been in place since the autumn of 2015 is also mentioned. This is contrasted with the efforts of the majority of the Members of the European Parliament to tackle the acute challenge and with the Commission's action on specific breaches. A co-ordinated strategy is sorely needed.SCOPUS: ar.jFLWINinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe