What is RSD?

Fairness

Transparency

Accountability

Refugee status determination (RSD) is the doorway to the protection and assistance that the international community provides to refugees.  In dozens of countries, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) acts as the gatekeeper. UNHCR-RSD is especially predominant in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

 

In most western countries, governments decide asylum cases on their own. But in many countries, UNHCR decides refugee cases.  UNHCR does this by determining whether an individual asylum-seeker (and in some cases, an entire family) meets the international legal definition of a refugee.

 

In this role, the UN's refugee agency effectively decides among asylum-seekers who can be saved from deportation and in some cases released from detention, who can get humanitarian assistance, and often who can apply to resettle to third countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and some states in the European Union. 

 

UNHCR has been doing this work for decades, nearly since its founding in the early 1950s. The official history of UNHCR can be traced to a November 1951 memorandum by the High Commissioner. But it was little noticed by legal scholars and human rights organizations until recently. Beginning in the 1990s, lawyers and human rights organizations began to take more notice, and there is now a growing list of academic and NGO studies on the subject.

 

Nearly every independent assessment of UNHCR’s RSD procedures has raised serious concerns, chiefly about lack of basic fairness safeguards. In a procedure that can have life or death consequences, UNHCR typically withholds most evidence from scrutiny, and does not provide a meaningfully independent appeal. Some UNHCR offices have resisted asylum-seekers’ rights to legal representation.  These problems have occurred despite the fact that UNHCR has issued clear advice to governments that asylum-seekers are entitled to all of these rights, and others, in RSD procedures.

 

UNHCR has promised to improve its RSD procedures, and issued new procedural standards for its field offices in 2003. UNHCR recognition rates have risen considerably since then, although UNHCR still does not hold itself to the same standards it advocates for governments. UNHCR now promotes the expansion of legal aid in its own RSD work, and has begun giving more detailed reasons for rejection to asylum-seekers.

 

At the same time, international law is clear that RSD should be a government responsibility. It is not supposed to be UNHCR’s job. UNHCR offices often lack sufficient resources to conduct RSD, which requires substantial time, training, supervision and facilities if it is to be done well. And, even if UNHCR conducts RSD perfectly, refugees ultimately depend on host governments to respect refugee rights — most importantly the right to not be deported (principle of non-refoulement).

 

For more information about the way UNHCR determines refugees status, refer to our sections on standards and local issues and to our FAQ.

 

If you don’t find the information you need here, write us.

 

 

 

 

This site is not associated with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and does not reflect the views of UNHCR.

RSDWatch.org

An independent source of information about the way the UN refugee agency decides refugee cases.

 

A project of Asylum Access