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Box 2.Border closure breaches international refugee law

UNHCR has stated: “denial of access to territory without safeguards to protect against refoulement cannot be justified on the grounds of any health risk … States have a duty vis-à-vis persons who have arrived at their borders, to make independent inquiries as to the persons' need for international protection and to ensure they are not at risk of refoulement. If such a risk exists, the State is precluded from denying entry or forcibly removing the individual concerned” (31).

Denying access to territory and asylum procedure also blatantly contradicts international law and many other provisions of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its Additional Protocol of 1967 (32). This includes the prohibition of any penalties for irregular entry under Art 31 and the derogation clause contained in Art 9. While granting States Parties the right to adopt temporary measures in times of emergency, Art 9 does not allow suspending asylum procedure. On the contrary, the wording of this provision makes it clear that access to protection remains binding even in such exceptional circumstances, for provisional measures do apply “pending a determination by the Contracting State that that person is in fact a refugee”.

Furthermore, when denial of access to territory targets asylum seekers from a particular country, this breaches the principle of non-discrimination under Art. 3 of the Geneva Convention and many other similar provisions of human rights treaties (including Arts. 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (8)).