Access Denied? – Human Rights Approaches to Compensate for the Absence of a Right to Be Granted Asylum

Abstract

Migration is a phenomenon that has shaped the history of mankind. While migration has had a strong internal dimension (domestic migration) for a long time, the increasing migration flows crossing borders within the last decades have brought this topic to the core of international legal and political debates. States and societies feel challenged by the tasks and responsibilities of managing migration and the moral duties of humanity associated with this. In these debates, a ‘right to asylum’ is often invoked – partly as a nightmare scenario, partly to narrow the corridors of political deliberation and action. International law does, however, not provide for a right to be granted asylum. Yet, international refugee as well as human rights law contain provisions capable of substituting for the absence of a right to receive asylum to a great extent. In the end, it is the effective protection of human rights globally that serves as the best response to the challenges of migration as it might reduce the reasons inciting or forcing people to leave their home countries.