Enhancing the rights of protection-seeking migrants through the Global Compact for Migration: the case of EU asylum policy

In this paper, we argue that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is not only a breakthrough for a rights-based approach in international migration governance but also an asset to the international protection system – that is, the legal and political regime concerning refugees and other persons seeking international protection. The parallel emergence of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), situated in the pre-existing international protection system with the Refugee Convention of 1951 at its core, may suggest otherwise, namely, that the GCM is not relevant for refugees and other protection-seeking migrants. The authors of this paper challenge this assumption. We claim that the GCM can enhance the rights of persons in need of international protection, both within and outside the scope of the refugee definition provided in the Refugee Convention. To make our point, we use the EU as a test case. We shall demonstrate that the GCM has major policy implications in European asylum policy if the commitments laid down in the Migration Compact were taken seriously. By way of example, we shall discuss three key issues of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS): access to protection, reception conditions, and detention. Viewing current EU policies on these matters through the lens of the pertinent GCM Objectives, the relevance of the GCM’s contents can readily be identified. We will demonstrate that States have undertaken, according to the GCM, to broaden the scope of alternative pathways to protection, to secure economic and social rights of all migrants regardless of their protection status, and to work towards ending the use of detention as a means of asylum policy. Against this backdrop, faithfully implementing the GCM would require the EU and its Member States to make significant policy changes. Since their current policies are hardly exotic in the Global North, it seems safe the conclude the GCM more generally has the potential to enhance the rights of protection-seeking migrants and to strengthen the international protection system