Expert Reports
Expert Report on Opportunities and Obstacles to Universal Ratification of the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) and the Convention against Enforced Disappearances Initiative (CEDI) published an unprecedented study on the ratification of the CPED Convention.
Written by Professor Sangeeta Shah and Rosie Woodward (HRLC), with Dr Claire Callejon (CEDI), the report maps gaps in ratification and identifies obstacles and opportunities towards universal adherence. It seeks to inform and influence the ongoing multi-actor efforts to promote the Convention and its objective of ending enforced disappearances, including the project to organise a World Congress on Enforced Disappearances in January 2025. The findings presented in the report were presented to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearance and the Committee on Enforced Disappearance in September 2023.
Expert Report on the Streamlined Asylum Process
In October 2023, the HRLC’s Forced Migration Unit (FMU) published a new report examining the Streamlined Asylum Process, introduced by the Home Office in February 2023. Under this new process, refugee status can be granted on the basis of a questionnaire, without the need for an interview, for those who are from countries that have high acceptance rates. Written by Dr Natalie Hodgson, head of the FMU, with the support of Melissa Jarvis (LLM, University of Nottingham), the report evaluates the first six months of the Streamlined Asylum Process, exploring its strengths and limitations.
This report finds that, in pursuit of its goal to reduce the asylum backlog, the Government has made decisions that appear to have prioritised quick decision-making over high-quality decision-making. However, in doing so, the Government has created a process that might be more efficient in the short term but risks being less efficient in the long term. Furthermore, by prioritising short-term quickness, the Government has created a process that undermines its stated goal of making ‘high-quality, accurate decisions’. It is also important to consider the human cost of this policy, both for people seeking asylum and for the people and organisations working to support them.
The report finds that the streamlined asylum process has caused significant anxiety and stress for people seeking asylum, overloaded an already struggling legal aid sector, and could potentially contribute to a longer-term erosion of the capacity of the legal aid sector by exacerbating the factors that cause practitioners to cease performing legal aid immigration work.
Read the report