Hungary’s Actions: Past the Borderline of International Law

Guest post by Bríd Ní Ghráinne, lecturer in International and Refugee Law at the University of Sheffield. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and an LLM from Universiteit Leiden. Bríd can be contacted at b.a.nighrainne@sheffield.ac.uk. A shorter version of this article is available at the Oxford Human Rights Hub blog.

As the European refugee ‘crisis’ worsens, the Hungarian government is resorting to more extreme border control measures that test the parameters of international law. The Guardian reported on 17 September that Hungary had fired gas canisters and sprayed water at crowds of frustrated refugees who had briefly broken through the fence that separates Hungary and Serbia. It was also reported that asylum-seekers’ claims were being assessed and rejected ‘within minutes.’ These reports have ‘shocked’ the international community, and the purpose of this brief piece is to give an overview of the legal issues engaged.

There are three separate legal regimes that bind Hungary in respect of these events. International law, and in this case, the 1951 Refugee Convention, takes primacy for reasons that will not be discussed in detail here. European Union law as well as the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights are also relevant as Hungary is party to the EU and the Convention.

Regretfully, history has shown us that rejection at the frontier is not an uncommon response in cases of mass influx of refugees, such as in April 1999, when Macedonia closed its border to Kosovar refugees at the Blace border crossing. Article 33(1) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Hungary became a party in 1989, provides that no-one shall be expelled ‘in any manner whatsoever’ to the frontiers of territories where their lives or freedoms may be in danger. This provision applies to recognised refugees as well as asylum-seekers, and there is strong academic consensus that this provision applies to those presenting themselves at the border, as is the case in Hungary. However, whether the lives of the refugees who have been pushed away from the border with Serbia are now in danger is difficult to tell and therefore it is unclear if Article 33(1) has been engaged on this occasion. If they eventually have to return to Syria (if that is where they came from), then there has certainly been a breach.

A stronger argument can be made that Hungary’s ‘pushback’ actions are in breach of EU and European human rights law. The Dublin III regulation, which provides that the first EU country in which an asylum seeker arrives has responsibility for determining that asylum seeker’s status, does not render Hungary’s actions legal. Thus if another EU country has been entered prior to arriving at the Hungarian border, Hungary does not necessarily have the right to refuse asylum. Under international law (as opposed to EU law), there is no obligation incumbent upon a refugee to make an asylum claim in the first country of arrival. Further, many of the asylum-seekers trying to cross the Hungarian border would have first arrived in Greece, which does not have a functioning asylum processing regime. Hungary would therefore be responsible for deciding the claim, as set out in the Dublin III regulation. Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights found in the case of MSS v Belgium and Greece.

The reports of asylum claims being dealt with within ‘minutes’ as reported by the Guardian are also worrying, particularly because there seems to be no effective appeals system and refugees are given information only in the Hungarian language. These actions are arguably a breach of both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the EU Asylum Procedures Directive (Council Directive 2005/85/EC). Although the 1951 Refugee Convention does not formally set out the procedures involved in the determination of refugee status, Goodwin-Gill and McAdam, in their text The Refugee in International Law (OUP, 2011), argue that the Refugee Convention’s object and purpose of protection and assurance of human rights strongly support an obligation to adopt effective internal measures. This was the position of the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which in its Executive Conclusion No. 8 (XXVIII) (1977) set out a range of procedural guarantees to be followed in the determination of asylum proceedings, including that: (i) Applicants should receive the necessary guidance as to the procedure to be followed; (ii) Applicants should be given the necessary facilities, including interpreters and contact with the UNHCR, to submit their case; and (iii) failed asylum-seekers should be given a reasonable time to appeal and they should be allowed to remain in the country while appeal is pending.

Similarly, the Asylum Procedures Directive guarantees access to a fair and efficient asylum decision and it explicitly applies to applications made at the border. It mirrors the standards set out by the ExCom above, and goes into significant detail regarding the content of the rights granted, such as the conditions under which an interview must take place and the scope of legal assistance and protection. If the allegations of asylum applications being rejected ‘within minutes’ are true, it is highly likely that Hungarian authorities have not complied with these EU and international legal standards.

Finally, it is necessary to examine the legality of the use of tear gas as reported by the Guardian to force migrants back from Hungary’s border. According to the European Court of Human Rights case of Abdullah Yaşa and Others v. Turkey [2013], the use of tear gas in itself is not necessarily a violation of the Convention where a gathering is not peaceful. In the Yaşa case, the gathering was deemed to be ‘not peaceful’ as the demonstrators were throwing stones, as was reportedly the case with the migrants at the Hungarian border. However, the European Court of Human Rights also found that the use of tear gas can be a violation of Article 3 of the Convention where excessive force is used, for example, where tear-gas grenades are launched (Yaşa), or where tear gas is used on someone deprived of their liberty (Güneş v. Turkey [2012]). As the exact circumstances surrounding the use of the tear gas at the Hungarian border is not clear, it seems difficult to come to a conclusion whether the Hungarian authorities’ actions in this respect were unlawful.

In sum, the actions of the Hungarian authorities in allegedly dismissing asylum applications ‘within minutes’ and in rejecting refugees at the frontier are appropriately condemned as a violation of International, EU, and European human rights law.

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How to cite this blog post (Harvard style):

Ghráinne, Β. Ν. (2015) Hungary’s Actions: Past the Borderline of International Law. Available at: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2015/09/hungary's-actions (Accessed [date]).