1. Introduction
The concept of a ‘safe country’, whether as a safe third country, safe country of origin, or first country of asylum, has gained prominence in migration management, particularly within the context of externalised asylum processing and returns. This has been accompanied by ongoing disputes over disembarkation to a ‘place of safety’ following rescue or interception at sea. The ‘safe country’ concept and the lawfulness of accompanying practices remain highly controversial under international law.
Safe country practices are expanding in the context of externalised migration control and asylum processing, aimed at stemming arrivals, preventing onward movement and speeding up returns. Examples of implemented and planned practices from different jurisdictions worldwide include Australia’s offshore processing regime, the arrangements between the UK-Rwanda, Italy-Albania, Denmark-Rwanda, the Netherlands-Uganda, Germany-Uzbekistan, EU-Turkey, Canada-USA and between the USA and Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. At the EU level, safe country concepts have gained new life in the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, the instruments of which come into force in June 2026.
This blog forum problematises these discussions from a multi-disciplinary perspective by moving beyond the question of whether any particular country is safe, and questioning the inherent lawfulness and legitimacy of the safe country concept and related policies as a whole. The forum presents a broader assessment of the concept of “safety” in the context of migration and asylum cooperation and features novel conceptual arguments and new ways of understanding safe country practices and the implementation of the concept in different jurisdictions around the world.
2. Contributions
The contributions to the series span across diverse geographical contexts, with pieces examining safe country practices and instruments in Africa, the Americas, Australia and Europe, which speaks to their widespread usage. Blog posts providing insights from Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (USA) are complemented by interventions analysing the impact of these practices in the affected regions.
Thematically, this series features firstly, critiques focused on the States imposing safe country practices and manifestations of externalisation. These posts highlight the policy architecture of safe country practices and the new directions they are taking.
Dr Emilie McDonnell’s piece, A New Safe Third Country Mechanism: Australia’s Deportation Arrangement with Nauru, examines Australia’s new deportation arrangement with Nauru, arguing that it represents a troubling evolution of the country’s longstanding strategy of externalising its protection obligations. Her post highlights how the concept of a safe third country is being expanded beyond offshore processing to justify the removal of people already present in a State’s territory, irrespective of how long they have made that country their home or the protection they are entitled to as refugees. It warns against the further normalisation of wealthy countries paying less developed States to accept refugees and migrants deemed undesirable. The piece calls for Australia to adopt rights-based asylum and refugee policies that enhance community safety while protecting the rights and dignity of migrants.
Dr Gamze Ovacık, in her post Safe third country concept: A tool for containment and illegalization of mobility, frames the STC concept as a representation of the fundamental problems in the global asylum paradigm and builds on two case studies. She demonstrates that the EU-Turkey context epitomises the containment aspect as a case of unbalanced distribution of responsibility for refugee protection in the region. he Canada-USA context, on the other hand, showcases the constructed illegalisation of human mobility following policy interventions. Drawing on these STC practices in Europe and North America, she problematises the arrangements that confine refugees in conditions where they cannot access effective protection.
In their post, The EU’s ‘Safe Third Country’ Concept: Is Changing the Law a Silver Bullet for Extraterritorial Processing?, Dr Annick Pijnenburg and Dr Kris van der Pas problematise the EU’s growing interest in outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries, through an analysis of the evolving ‘safe third country’ concept in EU asylum law. They underline the EU legislative developments aimed at enabling transfer of asylum seekers to ‘safe third countries’ by weakening the connection requirement in the EU Asylum Procedures Directive. They argue that extraterritorial processing likely violates other sources of law binding on the EU and its member states. Drawing on the UK-Rwanda deal and Australia’s arrangements with Papua New Guinea and Nauru, they warn against the risks of refoulement and the systemic human rights violations that extraterritorial processing entails.
Dr Mariana Gkliati’s post, The New Frontier of Externalisation: Safe Third Countries and Return Hubs – Key Changes and Implications, situates externalisation as a defining feature of European migration governance with a shifted focus to returns as the new frontier of externalisation. Gkliati analyses EU level proposals to strengthen returns enforcement, including a new Returns Regulation and new amendments to the Asylum Procedures Regulation focusing on the expanded ‘safe third country’ concept and the creation of ‘return hubs’. The post highlights that these developments serve a political purpose: signalling resolve to an increasingly nationalist and rightwing populist EU electorate, while simultaneously seeking to send a message of deterrence to prospective migrants.
A second set of posts examines countries targeted by externalisation efforts or being enlisted as partner countries, questioning whether these countries can genuinely be considered safe and exposing the human rights impacts and harms that safe country policies inflict on people.
Dr Soumia Bouhdoud’s post, The Role of Morocco as a “Safe” Country in Containing and Preventing Irregular Migration: A Façade of Solidarity, explores the impact of Europe’s outsourcing policies on irregular migrants in Morocco against the backdrop of its role as a so-called ‘safe’ country in preventing onward movement toward Europe. It argues that, despite cooperation with European countries to improve reception conditions and regularisation, migrants in Morocco face precarity, discrimination and inadequate protection. Bouhdoud grounds her findings in her field work on the lived experience of sub-Saharan migrants, including their own forms of solidarity and resistance. The post shows how Europe’s delegation of responsibility to Morocco reveals a façade of solidarity, while also highlighting the heightened responsibility of so-called ‘safe\ countries to ensure their migration management practices uphold international standards and shared responsibilities.
Dr Cristiano d’Orsi’s piece, The United States’ Attempt to Deport Third Country Nationals to Africa: Is This a Mutually Beneficial Situation?, examines recent efforts by the USA to deport “unwanted” migrants, primarily those with criminal convictions, who cannot be returned to their countries of origin, to several African states, including Rwanda, Ghana and Eswatini. D’Orsi argues that deporting migrants to these countries infringes their human rights and undermines their wellbeing, while also highlighting the political and financial incentives offered to receiving States. Through legal and geopolitical analysis, the piece questions whether these deportations can ever be considered safe or lawful despite being framed as mutually beneficial agreements. The post highlights how the externalisation of migration control often prioritises political and economic leverage over the protection and dignity of migrants, while reshaping geopolitical relationships.
In her contribution, Colombia: Safe Third Country for Whom? The U.S. Amid Venezuelan Forced Migration, Juliana Poveda-Clavijo examines the meaning of 'safety' in the case of the USA's unilateral designation of Colombia as a 'safe country' aimed at containing Venezuelan forced migration and circumventing its international protection obligations. By analysing the political context, she argues that the meaning of 'safety' is manipulated by the USA to promote its migration management interests. She highlights the weakened Colombian capacity to pursue its peacebuilding agenda and prevent further displacement of both nationals and Venezuelans.
Kate Motluk’s post, Is Trump’s America Safe for Asylum-Seekers? Re-Examining the Safe Third Country Agreement Between Canada and the USA in 2025, focuses on the 2023 amendment of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the USA that largely precludes asylum applications following irregular border crossings. It argues that with its recent expansion, the STCA acts as a barrier to accessing asylum based on the differences between the Canadian and American asylum systems, with a risk of denying protection for certain groups including those fleeing gender-based violence. The post reflects on the legal challenges to the STCA before Canadian Courts and the current, rapidly changing political landscape in the USA and its increasingly restrictive immigration policies.
Finally, a third set of contributions offer insights into institutions and the significance of adjudicative bodies for challenging safe country policies, drawing on evidence from regional and domestic levels.
The post, Beyond the Eurocentric Gaze: Adjudicating Externalisation Through the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, by Ramy Abdelhady builds on the rise of externalisation practices involving Global North states shifting the burden of refugee protection onto countries in the Global South, with Africa increasingly becoming a focal point for European policymakers. It argues for positioning African regional and sub-regional human rights bodies and mechanisms at the centre of debates regarding the externalisation of refugee protection in Africa. It analyses the unique capacity of the African Commission to challenge externalisation practices, including STC agreements, through its mandate to protect and promote refugee rights.
Dr Vicky Kapogianni’s piece, The Legal Labyrinth of Safe Third Country Designations: Blanket Assumptions of Safety in EU Asylum and Externalisation Policy, critically examines the legal and political implications of blanket assumptions of safety in safe country lists across the EU. It does so by drawing on recent domestic and regional jurisprudence, including from the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and Ireland’s High Court, as well as specific case studies, notably the EU-Lebanon migration arrangement and Cyprus’s suspension of Syrian asylum claims. Situating STC designations within the EU’s broader externalisation agenda, the post argues that the increasing instrumentalisation of ‘safety’ risks, displacing responsibility onto third countries with fragile protection systems and eroding core asylum guarantees, are embedded in EU and international refugee law.
3. Convergences, Divergences and Emerging Questions
In examining safe third country mechanisms of extraterritorial processing and border management, as well as safe country of origin designations, several common threads emerge across the diverse contributions to this series. These include the varied modalities through which safe country practices are implemented and the divergences in legal and policy frameworks; assessments of how such practices undermine responsibility sharing in international law when understood as part of externalisation strategies of containment; and critical reflections on the legality of safe country concepts and state practice in light of their human rights impacts.
Concerning implementation modalities, this forum highlights a clear trend toward the expansion of safe country concepts, both in practice and conceptually. The geographical widening of the Canada-USA Safe Third Country Agreement to the entire land border, and the expansion of Nauru’s role beyond processing asylum seekers intercepted at sea by Australia to also receiving people who may have lived in Australia for years, are emblematic of this shift. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum similarly contributes to this expansion by allowing countries to be deemed safe except for certain regions or groups of people, and by creating an EU-wide list designating Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco, Tunisia, and, under certain conditions, EU candidate countries, as safe countries of origin. Conceptual expansion is also evident: both the new Australia-Nauru third country reception arrangements and the EU Pact omit the requirement for a connection between the asylum seeker and the safe third country. Combined with new bilateral arrangements pursued by the EU and USA in Africa, the forum highlights how the expansionary trajectory is beyond doubt.
A recurring theme in this collection of blogs is that safe country practices are often introduced through legal instruments or policy initiatives that sidestep democratic processes by relying on a lack of transparency, informality or unilaterally. The 2023 expansion of the Canada-USA Safe Third Country Agreement occurred with minimal prior public awareness; the additional protocol had already been agreed upon in 2022 but was kept secret until it was announced alongside the expansion itself. Australia’s new memorandum of understanding with Nauru has not been made public, lack oversight and was enabled by rushed legislative changes with minimal scrutiny amidst widespread opposition. The EU frequently relies on cooperation instruments that are fluid and informal in nature, such as the EU-Turkey Statement or the EU-Morocco Mobility Partnership, while the USA has adopted unilateral designations, such as naming Colombia as a 'safe country' for Venezuelan forced migrants, in implementing the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.
Across all contributions, safe country practices are situated within the broader phenomenon of externalisation. he safe third country concept is not simply a procedural tool for dealing with asylum applications, something technocratic and apolitical. It has become part and parcel of externalisation policies that aim to shift protection responsibilities to third countries. This dynamic creates a domino effect, as states subjected to externalisation replicate similar practices. In the EU, a growing emphasis on returns, through an expanded safe third country concept and the creation of return hubs, marks the new frontier of externalisation. The EU-Turkey context speaks to how these arrangements function as containment tools that entrench an unbalanced distribution of responsibility for refugee protection across regions. The EU Pact further embeds externalisation through ‘cash-for-migration-control’ partnerships with third countries, including Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, that expedite asylum seeker returns, and through legislative developments enabling externalised returns. The USA mirrors these trends in Latin America, implementing digital mechanisms to keep asylum seekers outside its territory and increasingly resorting to harder border closure and mass expulsions. Several contributions underscore that safe country practices including by Australia, EU, Canada and the USA undermine state commitments to international cooperation and global responsibility sharing under the Refugee Convention and the Global Compact on Refugees.
The series also reveals how safe country practices prioritise containment over addressing the root causes of displacement and rights-based asylum and migration policies, generating significant human rights harms. In the Canada-USA context, preventing access to asylum at points of entry causes people on the move to take more dangerous, clandestine journeys, increasing resort to human smuggling and exposure to trafficking. USA policies have contributed to Venezuelans, alongside other migrants, undertaking perilous journeys through the Darién Gap along the Colombia-Panama border and bottlenecks at the USA-Mexico border. Between Morocco and Spain, pushbacks and pullbacks have become routine, involving collective expulsion, arbitrary detentions, denial of asylum procedures and disappearances. Sub-Saharan migrants face hazardous desert crossings facilitated by smugglers.
Several posts also highlight due process violations. Australia has removed the requirement to give people notice and the opportunity to respond before a decision is made about their removal to a third country. The EU has removed and removal of automatic suspensive effect of judicial complaints against STC transfers in the EU. Several contributions argue that the legality of EU-safe country practices should be assessed against compliance with legal norms across the multi-level legal order, including the European Convention on Human Rights and international refugee and human rights law, an approach equally relevant elsewhere, given that norms governing extraterritorial processing, such as the prohibition of torture, non-refoulement and right to life, are considered part of customary international law.
Beyond these violations, the safe third country concept is criticised for restricting the right to seek territorial asylum. Rwanda’s failure to issue refugee status to most asylum seekers in 2024 severely limits access to protection. The Canada-USA Safe Third Country Agreement similarly obstructs access to asylum, especially considering the disparities between the asylum systems of the two countries. Digital mechanisms used by the USA to reject asylum applications submitted by Venezuelans following transit through Colombia function as a de facto bar to asylum. These practices reflect a punitive approach, where States treat even brief transits through third countries as grounds to reject asylum claims, constructing a legal fiction that such ‘secondary movements’ are illegal, as well as evidence of system abuse by asylum seekers. This approach goes hand in hand with restrictive migration policies and political messaging that fuel anti-migrant public sentiments, as seen surrounding the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and harsh migration laws in Australia. Similarities between the USA and Australia in deporting refugees and other migrants with criminal convictions to third countries, even after many years of residence, further illustrates this trend.
Finally, many contributions raise concerns about the actual safety of third countries. Inadequate safeguards to ensure refugee protection and uphold human rights, such as the right to leave any country, prohibition of refoulement, prohibition of collective expulsion and access to asylum, render transfers problematic. In most cases, safe third country designations reflect geopolitical power asymmetries in pursuing containment purposes, rather than genuine safety assessments. Colombia's status is questionable due to ongoing violence, fragile peace, an overburdened asylum system and heightened risks for Venezuelans, including trafficking, sexual violence, forced displacement and enforced disappearances, particularly in conflict-affected regions in Colombia. The USA’s designation as safe for Canada is challenged, especially due to uneven asylum access and heightened refoulement risks for asylum seekers fleeing gender‑based violence. Morocco struggles to provide essential services to migrants, who face discrimination and precarity, leading many to try and continue their journey towards Europe. Similarly, Rwanda’s poor human rights record, inadequate asylum system and the conditions for asylum seekers and refugees have been highlighted by human rights groups and the UK Supreme Court. Similar concerns are raised in these blogs regarding Nauru, Niger and Tunisia. Such conditions in third countries that are conducive to human rights violations exacerbate rule of law concerns, particularly where governments attempt to circumvent judicial rulings against safe country arrangements by expanding or redefining the concept, as at the EU level, following Australia’s example of legislating around rulings.
4. Conclusion: Looking Forward
While contributing to ongoing debates on the compatibility of safe country practices with international human rights and refugee law, this series also highlights the promise of legal institutions in countering both safe country practices and externalisation more broadly. Drawing on domestic, regional and international legal standards, contributors show how the multi-level legal order and the applicability of multiple legal regimes governing safe country practices has the potential to strengthen rights protection. In Europe, despite ever-growing reliance on externalisation, national and regional jurisprudence has pushed back against efforts to expand safe country practices and dilute legal standards, by insisting on robust safeguards and case-by-case assessments even when presumptions of safety exist. Similar potential exists in other jurisdictions, such as African human rights bodies, especially the African Commission, building on their precedents concerning issues such as arbitrary and mass expulsions, non-refoulement, and the right to seek asylum. This exposes the fragility of safe country practices when under judicial scrutiny, although the tension between courts and governments are likely to persist amid policy and legislative shifts aimed at circumventing judicial restraints.
Overall, this series revealed the global expansion of safe country practices as key tools of externalisation, their impact on migrants and citizens, and the consequences for countries targeted by externalisation. By foregrounding the role of politics and power in shaping these dynamics, the series calls for an urgent rethinking of how safety, access to asylum and responsibility-sharing in refugee protection are understood and achieved.
5. About the co-editors
Dr Mariana Gkliati is an Assistant Professor of Migration and Asylum Law at Tilburg University. She is Associate Editor for the International Migration Review, Senior Research Affiliate with the Refugee Law Initiative, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Externalysing Asylum. She researches questions of human rights, the Rule of Law, legality, and accountability, with a particular focus on forced migration and EU agencies. She further regularly serves as a legal analyst for various national and international organisations, law firms, journalists, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, and the European Parliament. Current areas of interest: border externalisation, shared responsibility of state and non-state actors, digitalisation of migration governance, administrative and legal accountability, law and space. See here for publications.
Dr Emilie McDonnell is an international lawyer and human rights advocate with expertise in international human rights law, refugee law and public international law. She is an Adjunct Senior Researcher in the School of Law at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her experience includes roles at the Australian Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch and the Tasmanian Refugee Legal Service. She is a Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI), a member of the RLI Externalisation Working Group and a Kaldor Centre Affiliate. She is the author of Protecting the Right to Leave in an Era of Externalised Migration Control (Hart Publishing, 2026).
Dr Gamze Ovacık is a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and a part-time Faculty at Concordia University Political Science Department. Previously, she was an assistant professor at Başkent Law School and a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Law of the University of Gothenburg within the ASILE Project on global asylum governance and the European Union’s role. She specialises in migration and asylum law, and her current research focuses on policies for the externalisation of migration control, judicial practices on asylum, and third-world approaches to global mobility. Gamze is the coordinator of the Externalisation Working Group of the Refugee Law Initiative.