Every year, more than a million asylum applications are lodged worldwide. In 2021, a total of 1.4 million claims were made, 648 thousand of which were in the European Union, but only a fraction of these will eventually lead to protection. In 2021, 22% of first instance decisions in the EU granted refugee status; another 17% granted other protection statuses. If […]
News & blogs
A Novel Approach to EU Asylum Law
This Practitioners’ Handbook on the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and EU and Member States’ Commitments under the UN Global Compact on Refugees and the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration identifies CEAS provisions which fulfil the Compacts’ requirements as well as those that diverge therefrom. Through this exercise, the Handbook highlights […]
Never let anyone tell you that you can’t make a difference: UK civil society organisations challenge
The news has been welcomed by human rights groups and organisations as a victory both for people seeking sanctuary and democratic institutions in general. If the news may offer a momentary sense of relief, this only represents half of the story. The Nationality and Border Bill of Priti Patel The episode stands against the background […]
COMPARING THE DISCOURSE REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS IN EUROPE ACROSS TRADITIONAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA
We analyzed ~16 million social media posts (Twitter, Youtube and Reddit) and ~2 million news articles across nine different languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Polish). The posts were selected using similar query criteria. We dissected the discourse along two dimensions. First, we identified specific themes present across the different language […]
Can Russians refusing to perform military service claim asylum under EU law?
As Professor Elspeth Guild and I discuss in a recently published PROTECT Policy Brief, in both international refugee law and in EU law, people fleeing punishment or persecution for seeking to avoid conscription to fight in a conflict in which war crimes are taking place are entitled to seek and enjoy protection as a refugee. […]
Beyond Ukraine: Will the EU Expand Asylum Access and Rights?
The catastrophic humanitarian toll of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has been met by much-heightened attention and openness by Europe so far, with the Union taking the unprecedented step of activating the Temporary Protection Directive (European Commission 2022) and even previously reluctant countries such as the United Kingdom and Poland establishing substantial incentives for solidarity with Ukrainian […]
Roadmap to a human right-based refugee protection system
According to the UNHCR 2021 Global Trends Report, 1 in every 78 people has been forced to flee worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order – leading up to more than 100 million people being forcibly displaced by May 2022. Pursuant to UNHCR: “As new refugee situations emerge and intensify, and as existing ones reignite or remain unresolved, there is an acute need for durable solutions at increasing scale. The Global Compact on Refugees notes that one strategic priority for the humanitarian community is to identify and support durable solutions that enable refugees to rebuild their lives and live in safety and dignity.” But how far has the international refugee system come in responding to the needs of the refugees? The PROTECT project marks #WorldRefugeeDay by sharing our insights to this question and by sharing our roadmap to a human-rights based refugee protection system. All of which is based on intensive data collection and analysation during the two years of the project.
The Common European Asylum System and the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration
When: Tuesday, 27th September 2022, 17:00 – 19.00 hrs Where: Room 3.1, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London or online (register here) The (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the Centre for International Law at the University of Bristol invite you to […]
PROTECT AS PART OF THE UNHCR GAIN-NETWORK
PROTECT’s project leader, Hakan G. Sicakkan has initiated the University of Bergen’s partnership with the UNHCR – the UN Refugee Agency and membership in the GAIN-network during the first Global Refugee Forum in 2019, when the network was launched. The Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN) was established by the Global Compact on Refugees, affirmed in […]
New researcher at the Surrey-team
Meet Carmen Caruso Carmen Caruso (BA, MA , PhD) is a Research Fellow at the Department of Politics, University of Surrey. Her research interests lie at the nexus of social, political, and area studies and her research work focuses on contemporary migration/mobility, citizenship, diversity and social change, drawing expressively from gender and postcolonial critique. Most […]