A/HRC/7/12 page 7 walls and the deployment of semi-military and military forces and hardware in the prevention of migration by land and sea. These measures have often been targeted at wide geographic areas on the borders or coast of a main receiving country or region - for example, the Australasian/South-East Asian rim, the United States of America/Mexico border, and the southern coast of Europe - representing broad zones of exclusion.8 18. In recent years, in an effort to further curb irregular migration and simultaneously address issues of national security, some States seem to be employing techniques in order to “externalize” border controls to countries of origin and transit, whereby they may utilize bilateral agreements and/or promises of aid in order to transform these targeted countries into a potential buffer zone to reduce migratory pressures on receiving States.9 This may involve supplying sending and/or transit countries with infrastructure and training in preventing irregular migration, potentially including, for example, naval and air patrol operations, radar systems, and other technology to be used in the securing of borders by intercepting migrants in the process and then subsequently detaining and expelling them. Under the auspices of these agreements, there have been reports of receiving countries financing, inter alia, detention centres, training programmes for police officers, and concerted expulsions involving charter flights. The Special Rapporteur is receiving reports of sending and transit States utilizing new, tougher immigration and visa regulations to restrict migratory flows, resulting in obstacles to movement and harassment at airports and border crossings.10 19. The concern is that these policies, while legitimately aimed at reducing irregular migration, and while often incorporated into bilateral agreements that can have significant positive aspects for the countries that are the recipients of the aid, have contributed to the criminalization of irregular migration insofar as they treat migration violations as a criminal rather than administrative offence without the proper human rights protections afforded to migrants in the process.11 Moreover, these policies and the anti-migrant discourse that often accompany them have also in certain cases prompted and legitimized a notable increase in institutionalized discrimination, leading to further violations. 8 P. Green and M. Crewcock, “The war against illegal immigration: State crime and the construction of a European identity”, Current Issues in Criminal Justice 14 (2002), 87-101, in Lee, 3. 9 Hein de Haas, “The myth of invasion: irregular migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union”, October 2007, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford, http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/Irregular%20migration%20from%20West%20Africa%20%20Hein%20de%20Haas.pdf, p. 52. 10 11 Haas, p. 53. For example, see Amnesty International, Spain and Morocco: Failure to Protect the Rights of Migrants - One Year On, London, 2006.