Buying Your Way Out of the Convention: Examining Three Decades of Safe Third Country Agreements in Practice

BUYING YOUR WAY OUT OF THE CONVENTION:

EXAMINING THREE DECADES OF SAFE THIRD

COUNTRY AGREEMENTS IN PRACTICE

JACQUELINE LEWIS*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ......................................... 882

I. THE SAFE THIRD COUNTRY CONCEPT AND ITS EARLY IMPLEMENTATION 883

II. LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES ................ 886

A. International Framework ........................ 886

B. Legal Framework in the United States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 887

III. THE SAFE THIRD COUNTRY CONCEPT IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS . . . 889

A. European Agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 889

1. The Dublin Regulation....................... 889

2. E.U.-Turkey Agreement ...................... 891

B. American Agreements ........................... 894

1. U.S.-Canada Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894

2. U.S.-Guatemala Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 896

IV. FINDINGS: STCAS HAVE FAILED TO EFFECTIVELY AND

HUMANELY ADDRESS MASS MIGRATION ................. 898

A. Consistent Problems with Refoulement & Chain

Refoulement .................................. 898

B. STCAs May Actually Be Less Eff‌icient Than Intended. . . . 899

*Jacqueline C. Lewis, J.D. Candidate with a Certif‌icate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies,

2021, Georgetown University Law Center; B.A. Political Science with a minor in International Relations,

2018, Biola University. © 2021, Jacqueline Lewis.

881

C. STCAs May Incentivize Increased Irregular and Riskier

Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 900

D. Buying Your Way Out of the Convention .............. 900

V. RECOMMENDATIONS WHERE STATES MAINTAIN STCAS. . . . . . . . . 902

VI. CONCLUSION ...................................... 902

INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, the world has seen an historic increase in the number of

displaced persons. By the end of 2010, there were 43.7 million forcibly dis-

placed people worldwide—what was then the highest number in 15 years.

1

By 2019, the number of displaced persons had nearly doubled to 79.5 mil-

lion.

2

With many asylum systems overwhelmed,

3

States have increasingly

sought to construct alternatives to the traditional asylum regime by external-

izing the processing of asylum applications through bilateral and multilateral

agreements, wherein a designated safe third country processes asylum appli-

cations. Although initially conceived as burden-sharing systems, after three

decades of implementation in different States, these “safe third country

agreements” (“STCAs”) have generally failed to provide sustainable solu-

tions to mass f‌lows of refugees. Instead, STCAs with signif‌icant power and

wealth disparities between parties have allowed wealthy States to clandes-

tinely buy their way out of their obligations under the 1951 Refugee

Convention

4

and have resulted in the direct and indirect refoulement, or

return,

5

of millions of asylum seekers, despite these agreements purportedly

protecting against it.

This Note examines the expansion of STCAs in the last three decades, fo-

cusing on the American and European systems, analyzing their eff‌icacy at

providing sustainable solutions to unprecedented displacement. Section I will

discuss the history and purpose of STCAs. Section II will outline the

1. U.N. HIGH COMM’R FOR REFUGEES, GLOBAL TRENDS 2010 (2011), https://www.unhcr.org/

statistics/country/4dfa11499/unhcr-global-trends-2010.html.

2. U.N. HIGH COMM’R FOR REFUGEES, GLOBAL TRENDS 2019 (2020), https://www.unhcr.org/

5ee200e37.pdf.

3. See, e.g., Daphne Panayotatos, Reform Past Due: COVID-19 Magnif‌ies Need to Improve Spain’s

Asylum System, REFUGEES INT’L (July 27, 2020), https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2020/7/

22/reform-past-due-COVID-19-magnif‌ies-need-to-improve-spains-asylum-system; Doris Meissner, Faye

Hipsman & T. Alexander Aleinikoff, The U.S. Asylum System in Crisis: Charting a Way Forward,

MIGRATION POL’Y INST. (Sept. 2018), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/f‌iles/publications/

MPI-AsylumSystemInCrisis-Final.pdf; Anthony Faiola, A global surge in refugees leaves Europe

struggling to cope, WASH. POST (Apr. 21, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/new-

migration-crisis-overwhelms-european-refugee-system/2015/04/21/3ab83470-e45c-11e4-ae0f-f8c46aa8c3a4_

story.html.

4. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted July 28, 1951, art. 1, 19 U.S.T. 6259, 189

U.N.T.S. 137, 150 (entered into force Apr. 22, 1954) [hereinafter Refugee Convention].

5. Return to a State where the asylum seeker is placed at risk of persecution or torture.

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