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Immigrant Detention Is Expensive, and Alternatives Are Just As Effective

Case Management Programs Cost Less and Are More Humane than Imprisoning Asylum Seekers

A door has cracked open to the possibility of a future in which people fleeing their home countries might not be subjected to the oppressive walls of detention centers. In August, the US Department of Homeland Security announced a Case Management Pilot…
Photo of person being released from immigration detention.
Report

Dismantling Detention

Summary As the harmful effects of immigration detention become more widely known and the appropriateness of detaining migrants is increasingly questioned, governments are looking at alternatives to detention as more humane and rights-respecting…
News

Alternatives to Immigration Detention

Pilot Programs Point Way to Rights-Respecting Models

(New York) – Pilot programs testing alternatives to immigration detention in several countries, including the United States, offer governments models for more humane and rights-respecting approaches, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today…
Illustration of a man hugging his family outside of a detention center
News

Cyprus Moves to Shutter Local Human Rights Group

KISA Should Not Face Deregistration for a Technicality

In September 2020, while researching pushbacks of boats of migrants and asylum seekers from Cyprus, I worked closely with KISA, a Cypriot nongovernmental organization (NGO). People told Human Rights Watch that Greek Cypriot coast guard vessels tried…
A migrant carrying a camp bed and bed clothes inside a refugee camp in Kokkinotrimithia outside of Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
News

Cyprus: Asylum Seekers Summarily Returned

Pushbacks Against Surge of Arrivals by Boat From Lebanon

(Athens) – Cypriot coast guard forces summarily pushed back, abandoned, expelled, or returned more than 200 migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers coming from Lebanon during the first week of September 2020 without giving them the opportunity to lodge…
Cyprus coast guard carrying migrants from a boat from Lebanon interdicted on January 14, 2020. © 2020 Reuters/Yiannis Kourtoglou
News

Turkish Cypriot Authorities: Release Detained Syrian Asylum Seekers

Republic of Cyprus Should Process Their Claims

(Beirut) – Turkish Cypriot authorities should immediately release 175 detained Syrian asylum seekers, and Greek Cypriot authorities should allow them to cross the line into their territory and process their asylum claims, Human Rights Watch said…
175 Syrian asylum seekers were held in a sports hall in the Turkish controlled part of northern Cyprus for two days before being transferred to apartment buildings where they continue to be detained. Photo taken in March 2020.
News

Dispatches: Securing Borders or Saving Lives?

It was a shipwreck in Mediterranean waters so ghastly that even a Europe inured to the drowning of migrants and asylum seekers was compelled to act. Two months ago, a boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa, taking the lives of 366 people and put dangerous…
News

EU: Improve Migrant Rescue, Offer Refuge

Summit Needs Rights-Based Approach to Boat Migration, Syria Refugees

(Brussels) – European Union heads of state meeting in Brussels on October 24 and 25, 2013, should urgently adopt measures to improve sea rescues of migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach Europe, Human Rights Watch said today. The summit should also…
News

Joint Statement to Northern Cyprus Regarding Arrests Under Article 171

On 14, 15 and 16 October 2011 two groups of men were arrested in the Northern Cyprus under Article 171 of the 1929 Criminal Code, which criminalizes male homosexuality. Article 171, brought in under British colonial rule, is the only legal provision in…
News

European Parliament: Condemn Complicity in Illegal CIA Activity

The European Parliament should condemn European complicity in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program of “extraordinary renditions” and secret detention of prisoners, Human Rights Watch said today. The report of the European Parliament’s…