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Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB) - evidence of refugee and migrant pushbacks at EU borders
The Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB) initiative is formed by protection and legal aid organisations focusing on human rights compliance at the EU’s external and internal borders.
The PRAB partners have solid field presence in the countries of operation enabling direct access to victims of pushbacks, as well as longstanding experience in strategic litigation.
Pushbacks at EU borders
Pushbacks are expulsions without legal justification and procedure, usually employed by border police, law enforcement officials or other authorities. It is being used to push foreigners such as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from a state’s territory to the territory of another state without regard for the individual’s circumstances and right to seek asylum.
PRAB partners register and document pushbacks and cover both internal and external EU borders, such as the borders between France-Italy, Greece-Turkey, Croatia-Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary-Serbia, Belarus-Poland, Ukraine-Poland, Greece-North Macedonia, Slovenia-Italy, North Macedonia-Serbia, and Lithuania-Belarus.
Are pushbacks illegal?
- Resorting to pushbacks, regardless of whether these involve violence, as a means of protecting states’ borders constitutes an illegal practice.
- Pushbacks risk violating the principle of non-refoulement being a cornerstone of international refugee law and of international human rights law - as well as the prohibition of collective expulsion and as it prevents access to procedures for international protection.
- States have the right to control movement across their borders. However, this must happen in compliance with their obligations under international and European Human Rights Law.
Human rights compliance must not be an obstacle to migration management – a rights-based approach to border management is indispensable.
PRAB work exist out of 3 components:
- Document and collect testimonies of these well-established and systematic rights violations.
- Trigger and support legal action, when relevant and feasible.
- Highlight accountability issues, as well as the need for Independent Border Monitoring mechanisms.
