U.S. to Consider Overhauling Asylum System

NRC notes that these two principles — the First Country of Asylum and the Safe Third Country — are central to the Dublin Regulation, which was passed in 1990 and went into effect in 1997. The Dublin Regulation is a European Union (EU) law which determines which EU Member State is responsible for the examination of an application for asylum, submitted by persons seeking international protection under the Geneva Convention and the EU Qualification Directive, within the European Union.

The Dublin Regulation, created to streamline asylum management in Europe, allows an asylum application to be processed by one country; normally the country where the person first arrives in Europe. The Regulation aims to prevent “asylum shopping” when a person applies for protection in one country after being rejected by another, or when a person fails to apply for asylum in the first country he or she arrived at because they want to be granted asylum in another country.

The Dublin Regulation is only valid for European countries which have signed it, but the two principles on which it is based form an acceptable interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, and hence applicable to all countries that have acceded to that Convention.

The principles of First Country of Asylum and the Safe Third Country are not directly mentioned in the Convention, but are derived from Article 31, which states that a refugee should not be punished for illegally entering a country if they are arriving directly from a country where they were under threat.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) notesthat the principles of the first country of asylum and safe third country should be regarded as practices which have evolved among states, rather than principles based on international refugee law. UNHCR says that the principles may work to streamline asylum processing when there is formal cooperation between countries, for example the Dublin Regulation, but warns against interpreting the principles too broadly.

NCR says that there are few examples of Western countries considering countries in other parts of the world as safe third countries (two examples: Norway regards Russia, and the EU regards Turkey, as Safe Third Countries).

In 2010 UNHCR reviewed the asylum application practices of twelve EU countries in 2010. It found that only two EU countries – the United Kingdom and Spain — considered non-EU countries as Safe Third Countries: the United Kingdom considered the United States, Canada, and Switzerland as Safe Third Countries, while Spain considers Morocco and Algeria as Safe Third Countries.

The UNHCR stressed that it is not enough that refugees are safe from being returned to persecution in their home country (the non-refoulement-principle). Other requirements in the Refugee Convention must be met, including access to social assistance, healthcare, work, and education. The High Commissioner also stressed that a country must abide by the rules of the Convention in practice, not only on paper. Furthermore, an asylum seeker should have a close connection to a country for it to be considered a safe third country. Travelling through a country to reach another is not sufficient.

UNHCR also says that international cooperation and burden-sharing are prerequisites for refugee protection, and the country that has received an asylum application has primary responsibility to provide that person with protection. A country should only transfer responsibility for processing an asylum application to another safe country if both have asylum systems of the same standard. And there should be a clear agreement between the two countries about who is responsible for what.