Policy Brief: How to Implement Human Rights Monitoring

Across Europe, civil society organisations, National Human Rights Institutions, and international monitoring bodies have documented grave human rights violations occurring at external borders. Against this backdrop, the New Pact introduces an Independent Monitoring Mechanism, limited to the newly established screening and border asylum procedure, to serve as a credible safeguard for migrants' fundamental rights during these stages.

Combined efforts

However, existing monitoring bodies, such as National Human Rights Institutions, already face significant challenges, including harassment, threats, and operational restrictions. Establishing formal cooperation agreements between the new Monitoring Mechanisms and existing oversight actors, whose mandates extend to other locations and stages of the migration process, would greatly enhance the reach, capacity, and responsiveness of oversight efforts at EU border zones. 

Financial and structural independence

Author Joseph Cripps argues that true oversight only works when it is structurally and financially independent. Yet experience from around the world shows that such bodies are often deliberately undermined through cancelled budgets, political pressure, or even forcibly removing individuals from office. In this policy brief, he therefore highlights how implementing best practices can ensure credibility of these mechanisms and real protection for migrants' rights at Europe's borders.