Held online on 1 September 2022 within the scope of Action “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Migrants and Victims of Human Trafficking in Turkey”, the international roundtable brought together the representatives of the Presidency of Migration Management (PMM) of Türkiye and international consultants from Canada, the United Kingdom and Austria, as well as participants from the Council of Europe.
With an aim to support the PMM in preparation of secondary legislation on implementation of alternatives to immigration detention in Türkiye, a comparative Research Report has been provided on practical aspects of application of the alternative systems in 4 countries (the UK, the Netherlands, Canada and Austria). Those practical aspects concern the modalities of application of the alternative measures, their human right aspects, means of notification to the migrants and legal and practical consequences of non-compliance with these alternatives
Alternative to Detention (ATD) is referred to by European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as “an alternative measure […] less coercive than detention”. From the perspective of Council of Europe, alternative measures to the immigration detention are to be exercised in a way to ensure compliance with immigration procedures while upholding human rights, and therefore the measures to be applied in Türkiye should take into account the potential violations of Article 3, Article 5 and Article 8 of European Convention on Human Rights which may arise during the application of the measures concerned.
The international roundtable allowed the international experts involved in the development of this practical report and the representatives of the PMM responsible for the implementation of ATDs in Türkiye, to come together on a common platform and exchange about the challenges, good practices, lessons learned and human rights dimension of the alternative measures.
The meeting was organised within the framework of the Action “Strengthening the human rights protection of migrants and victims of human trafficking in Turkey”, which is a part of the European Union/Council of Europe collaboration titled “Horizontal Facility-II for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.
