Concerns Regarding Lack of IOM Mandate on Migrant Protection

Human Rights Watch's engagement with IOM arises from our concern that IOM has no formal mandate to monitor human rights abuses or to protect the rights of migrants and other persons, even though literally millions of people worldwide participate in IOM-sponsored programs and projects. We began to monitor and document IOM operations in the field in the early 1990s. In 1993, we documented IOM's role in the asylum determination system imposed on Haitian asylum seekers by the United States and concluded that the determination procedure violated the right to seek asylum. Ten years later, we continue to find IOM complicit in situations that threaten people’s human rights in many countries, as detailed in this paper.