This chapter details how States and regions use safe third country (STC) practices to deny protection to asylum seekers and refugees on the grounds that they have, or may have, protection in another country. The STC notion originated in Switzerland in 1979, spread throughout Europe in the 1980s, and was adopted by the European Union and countries such as Australia and Canada in the 1990s. Since then, developments in STC law and practice globally include new bilateral agreements, reforms to STC provisions in domestic and supranational legislation, and landmark decisions of superior courts. The chapter studies these changes in Europe, Australia, and North and South America, focusing in particular on the period from 2010 to 2020. It argues that there has been a dilution of STC protection standards in these four regions. The thresholds for effective protection have diminished and are lower than the minimum laid down in international treaties. Moreover, in the introduction and evolution of these STC practices, lawmakers and judges have disregarded the legal principle of international solidarity. While STC practices have long been critiqued as burden-shifting rather than -sharing, new STC law and jurisprudence exacerbates inequities between States with respect to responsibility for hosting refugees.
The Australian Journal of Human Rights is a publication of the Australian Human Rights Centre. Located in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, the Australian Human Rights Centre is an independent non-government organisation dedicated to encouraging multidisciplinary teaching and research in the area of human rights at the national, regional and international levels. The Australian Journal of Human Rights is the first journal of its kind in Australia to be devoted exclusively to the publication of articles, commentary and book reviews about human rights developments in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. The aims of the Journal are: • to raise awareness of human rights issues in Australia and the Asia Pacific region by providing a forum for scholarship and discussion; and • to monitor human rights developments in this region. To achieve these aims the Journal adopts a broad-based multidisciplinary approach to human rights issues. It deals not only with the legal aspects of human rights but also with philosophical, historical, sociological, economic and political issues as they relate to human rights in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.
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