Instead of forging safe, legal pathways to protection, European states and the EU are fostering strategies of deterrence, exclusion and externalization. Most people on the move are left with no alternative but to cross borders irregularly. When they do, state actors routinely detain, beat and expel them – mostly in secret, with no assessment of their situation, and denying them access to legal safeguards.
These multiple human rights violations are all part of the pushback experience. Often reliant on racial profiling, pushbacks have become a normalized practice at European borders. ECCHR challenges this state of rightlessness through legal interventions and supports affected people to document and tell their stories. Together we hold states accountable and push for changes in border practice and policies.
Our team brings together a diverse group of lawyers and interdisciplinary researchers, working transnationally with partners to develop legal strategies and tackle rights violations at borders. We meticulously reconstruct and verify the experiences of those subjected to pushbacks. Confronted with states’ denial of the reality at Europe's borders, we collect, analyze and publicise in-depth knowledge. Our aim is to enforce the most basic of legal principles: the right to have rights.
