UNHCR Protection Manual

This guidance provides globally relevant advice and considerations to inform cooperative arrangements among States on asylum and ensure their consistency with international refugee and human rights law. In particular, it aims to inform the development and implementation of arrangements for State cooperation in relation to the transfer of refugees and asylum-seekers to a third country, when States are considering such arrangements. This guidance outlines the legal basis for such arrangements as well as their scope and content and should be read together with UNHCR’s existing positions and guidance on related issues, on which it is based. It also underscores the importance of responsibility-sharing and international cooperation as essential elements for the legality and practical viability of these arrangements. This guidance further describes the potential role of UNHCR in the development, conclusion, implementation and monitoring of transfer agreements pursuant to its mandate for the international protection of refugees and its supervisory responsibility for the application of refugee law instruments.

These Guidelines set out relevant legal standards concerning family reunification for refugees and other beneficiaries of international protection, in accordance with international and regional refugee and human rights law. The Guidelines first outline the right to family life and the principle of family unity as they apply to refugees and other beneficiaries of international protection and explain the concepts of family and of family reunification. They then address procedural requirements that may constitute obstacles to family reunification for refugees and other beneficiaries of international protection, including specific challenges for family reunification for children. Finally, the Guidelines discuss other specific issues related to family reunification, including restrictions related to mode of arrival, access to courts and travel documents.

A review of State practice to provide international protection based on international and regional refugee and human rights law or to provide admission and stay based on migration law to persons displaced across borders in the context of disasters and adverse effects of climate change demonstrating growing consensus on the need to protect such persons through national and regional applications of these three areas of law, but indicating that the use of these tools is limited, often random, hard to predict, and neither harmonized nor well-coordinated.

This annex to UNHCR’s note on the “externalization” of international protection (the ‘Note’) examines various policies and practices which effectively serve to “externalize” international protection obligations. It explains that measures designed, or effectively serving, to avoid responsibility or to shift, rather than share, burdens are contrary to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (‘1951 Refugee Convention’) and widely-accepted principles of international cooperation and solidarity. It further explains that such externalization measures are distinct from policies and practices adopted in accordance with international law, aimed at sharing international protection responsibilities in the spirit of international cooperation and solidarity.

This Note summarizes applicable legal standards and UNHCR’s positions regarding policies and practices which effectively serve to “externalize” international protection obligations.

This document sets out key legal considerations concerning the applicability of international and regional refugee and human rights law when cross-border displacement
occurs in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters.