News: Launch of RLI Declaration on Externalisation and Asylum

The first order of business today at the opening of the Refugee Law Initiative's 6th annual conference was the adoption of the RLI Declaration on Externalisation and Asylum. With the aim of offering "guidance to law- and policy-makers, practitioners, scholars and others," the Declaration outlines "international law standards that govern the legality of externalisation measures impacting on access to territorial asylum, with a particular focus on externalised border controls and externalised asylum systems." 

The Declaration is accompanied by an analytical paper that sets out "a definition of the term 'externalisation', relevant international law standards and a global account of the legal and policy issues raised by these two examples of externalisation."

This document is the first Declaration on International Protection that the Refugee Law Initiative has helped to realize. RLI intends to promulgate additional declarations and analytical papers every two years.