Detention

The detention of asylum-seekers and refugees has become commonplace in a number of countries and has serious lasting effects on individuals and families. UNHCR is concerned about the growing use of immigration detention, particularly of children. We address these practices through our 'Global Strategy - Beyond Detention 2014-2019', which aims to support governments to make the detention of asylum-seekers an exceptional rather than routine practice.

Under the Global Strategy, we will work with governments, international and national non-governmental organizations and other relevant stakeholders to address some of the main challenges and concerns around governmental detention policies and practices.

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The three main goals of the strategy are to

End the detention of children
Ensure that alternatives to detention are available in law and implemented in practice
Ensure that conditions of detention where detention is necessary and unavoidable meet international standards by, inter alia, securing access to places of immigration detention for UNHCR and/or our partners and carrying out regular monitoring.

The Global Strategy will be implemented at country and regional level, through the development of specific national plans of action. These will include a set of specific actions and initiatives that would need to be developed in order to achieve the overall global goals, including advocacy, awareness-raising and campaigning, cooperation and capacity-building, strengthening partnerships, information sharing, data collection and reporting, research and monitoring.

UNHCR has identified a number of countries to work with initially to revisit detention practices and to strengthen alternatives to detention, including Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zambia. UNHCR plans to expand this group of countries over the coming five years.

Key document: Detention Guidelines UNHCR position on non-detention of children