A/HRC/45/9 V. Privatization and securitization of immigration and border management 17. The involvement of private military and security companies in immigration detention and border control is part of a broader process of outsourcing inherent State functions to private actors across all areas of governance. Their operations in this domain have grown in parallel with the securitization10 of State approaches to handling migration supported by large increases in State budgets to fund these approaches. 18. With severe restrictions imposed on regular migration pathways around the world, migrants with varying protection profiles have been increasingly forced to travel by irregular means amid complex and mixed migration movements, often in large numbers. States, particularly countries of destination, have adopted laws and policies to tighten border controls and further reduce irregular entry. These responses have failed to address root causes, and diverge from a human rights-based approach that considers migrants as rights holders under international human rights law and in some instances international refugee law. 19. Rather, laws, policies and other measures taken by many States in recent years have significantly reduced protections for migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers. Such measures include: laws enacted to make leaving, entering or staying in a country irregularly or using the services of a smuggler criminal offences, including criminalizing the mere act of crossing a border; increased recourse to detention without seeking alternatives; restricted access to asylum; and rapid returns and removals, including of unaccompanied children, with insufficient due process guarantees resulting in violations of the principle of nonrefoulement and collective expulsion. More recently, several States have also criminalized organizations and individuals that have provided humanitarian assistance to migrants, such as search and rescue operations, or subjected them to political attacks or other punishments. In addition, the creation of so-called hotspots in some European countries has raised concerns. Established in order to ensure the identification, registration and fingerprinting of migrants arriving on European shores, to avail asylum seekers of an asylum procedure, and to coordinate the return of those migrants who are not granted permission to remain, they allegedly operate without a clear national legal framework and are often used more as detention centres than registration centres. 11 20. Another disturbing phenomenon has been the development of State “externalization” policies, under which border control no longer takes place at the physical borders of countries of destination. Rather, through a variety of means, these countries compel countries of first arrival, transit or departure to enforce border controls and prevent irregular entry to their territory. In so doing, countries of destination seek to circumvent their obligations to uphold the principle of non-refoulement and to guarantee the human rights of persons attempting to reach their territories. Consequently, migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees, often find themselves trapped in countries of first arrival or transit that have comparatively less capacity to provide them with the appropriate protection and process asylum claims in accordance with international law. Increasingly, countries of transit are also seeking to enforce externalization measures to prevent entry into their territory. This combination of policies has been disastrous for migrants, resulting in countless deaths along sea, lake, river, mountain and desert crossings and in the violation and abuse of migrants’ rights on a massive scale. 21. Today, immigration and border management has become a multibillion-dollar business, with global border security identified as a potential market for further growth in the coming years. The amount of outsourcing to private security has surged with migrants used to justify privatization of State security functions. Diverse corporate actors have positioned themselves to benefit from the aforementioned security approaches to migration and the corresponding hikes in public budgets for border security, with privatized border 10 11 “Securitization” refers to the process by which migration and border control have been increasingly integrated into security frameworks that emphasize policing, defence and criminality over a rightsbased approach (see A/HRC/23/46). See www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Migration/InSearchofDignityOHCHR_Report_HR_Migrants_at_Europes_Borders.pdf. 5