Detention of Asylum Seekers and Refugees And International Human Rights Law

Immigration legislation relating to asylum seekers and refugees in general, permits such administrative detention to be indefinite. Asylum seekers and deported refugees are often subject to lengthy periods of detention, sometimes amounting to several years. A claimed human right of asylum seekers and refugees to respect for their liberty, however, conflicts with the well-established right of states, conferred by both national and public international law, to control the admission and expulsion of non-nationals. The chapter considers the international legal jurisprudence on the question and attempts to formulate some principles that might be useful in striking the correct balance between state sovereignty and individual liberty. It seeks to concentrate upon direct challenges to immigration detention. Public international law is clear in laying down a firm rule that sovereign states have the right to control the admission to and expulsion from their territories of non-nationals.