18 December 2015: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released guidance for States on dealing with security concerns while maintaining refugee protection, responding to “uninformed and polarized discourse” over refugees. It notes that protecting refugees and national security are “not mutually exclusive.” The Office of the High Commissioner also released the Mid-Year Trends 2015 report covering worldwide displacement from conflict and persecution from January to June 2015.

The guidance document, titled ‘Addressing Security Concerns without Undermining Refugee Protection: UNHCR’s perspective,’ concludes that addressing terrorist threats does not require amendment of the principles of refugee protection, but rather a comprehensive and coordinated approach to addressing situations of mixed movements of refugees, migrants and others, with proper security and protection safeguards built in.

The Office’s recommendations include: enhanced cooperation between border guards, intelligence services and immigration and asylum authorities of the State concerned, other States along travel routes and organizations such as INTERPOL, Europol and Frontex, as well as the use of systems such as Eurodac, which could assist in the early identification of terrorist suspects; proper screening measures to be conducted in conformity with the principles of necessity, proportionality and non-discrimination, and subject to judicial control; the redesign of the asylum process to accommodate the setting up and operating of a specialized “exclusion unit” within the refugee status determination process, which would have expertise in relevant areas of refugee law and criminal law, specialist knowledge of terrorist organizations, and clear communication links with intelligence services and criminal enforcement agencies; information on asylum-seekers should not be shared with the country of origin; and incorporating the exclusion clauses of the 1951 Refugee Convention into national legislation.

UNHCR highlights that all persons have the right to seek asylum, and an application for asylum must be determined on its own merits, and not against negative and discriminatory presumptions deriving from the ethnic origin or religious faith of the claimant. It notes that it does not support policies that apply automatic detention of asylum-seekers entering irregularly or coming from particular countries, as are being implemented and/or considered in a number of States, which would contradict long-established standards on detention agreed by States, and could be seen as a discriminatory response that conflicts with international legal norms.

The 2015 trends report shows worsening indicators in several key areas, including that voluntary return rates (how many refugees can safely go back home, serving as a barometer of the global state of conflict) are at their lowest in over three decades, and that new refugee numbers have increased sharply.

Counting refugees who fall under UNHCR’s mandate, Turkey is the world’s biggest host country with 1.84 million refugees as of 30 June, while Lebanon hosts more refugees compared to population size than any other, 209 refugees per 1,000. Ethiopia pays most in relation to its economy, with 469 refugees for every US$1 of gross domestic product (GDP). The most substantial share of hosting refugees is carried by countries immediately bordering zones of conflict, many of them in the developing world.

Europe’s influx of people arriving by boat via the Mediterranean is only partly reflected in the report, as such arrivals escalated in the second half of 2015. Still, in the first six months, Germany was the world’s biggest recipient of new asylum claims, 159,000, close to the entire total for all of 2014, while the second largest recipient was Russia with 100,000 claims, mainly people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.

The current UNHCR, António Guterres, will be succeeded by Filippo Grandi of Italy, who served as Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). [Publication: Addressing Security Concerns Without Undermining Refugee Protection: UNHCR’s Perspective] [Publication: UNHCR Mid-Year Trends 2015] [UN Press Release on Guidelines] [UN Press Release on Trends Report] [Press Release on Grandi Election]