Flights of Shame or Dignified Return? Return Flights and Post-return Monitoring

Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to discuss return flights in the context of international human rights standards. What are the standards that have so far been developed by international organisations and the international monitoring bodies and how these standards have been applied in practice during return flights? Besides evolving standards, the paper discusses unclarities that need to be addressed to increase the human rights compliancy of return flights.

The article also addresses the major shortcoming in the monitoring of the process of returning migrants and rejected asylum seekers to their home countries, namely post-return monitoring. It is argued that new opportunities that modern technology offers have not been exploited to increase the international protection of returning migrants. Post-return monitoring could increase the transparency, dignity and human rights compliance of return operations.