Most of us don’t even know what carrier sanctions are. Yet they are one of the reasons many people struggle to get to a safe place when they are running away from war, genocide or a humanitarian crisis. They are a legal trick being used by nations all over the world to avoid compliance with international law and human rights of refugees.

So what are carrier sanctions and why are they so important? Imagine you are running away from repression or war. No matter if it is because of your political opinions, your race, gender identity, religion or sexual orientation. You just need to get out of that hell. The easiest way would be to get on a plane to a safe country and ask for asylum as soon as you arrive there. After all, international law gives you the right to a fair procedure that examines whether you deserve protection or not. Furthermore, international law obliges any country to keep you there until it can be proved that it will be safe for you to go back to where you came from. This is known as the principle of non-refoulement.

We could expect that airlines do their business moving people from one place to another, so when you land in a foreign country you get to a border control where they will determine if you can go through or you need to go back to where you came from. And where they should collect and process any asylum application. Let’s say that you arrive at border control and ask for asylum: border control should notify it and your case should be examined more in detail, so the country you just arrived to can make sure that they are not sending you back to a sure death. If they indeed think that it isn’t safe for you to be sent back, then you should be given protection. That’s the theory. It actually makes sense.

If this is how it works, how can it be that so many asylum seekers from unsafe countries do not get a fair process nor are granted protection? This is where carrier sanctions actually step in. Given that as soon as you enter a country asking for asylum you have the right to a fair process and not to be sent back to a dangerous place, nations have developed several ways to keep you away from getting in. The main one: carrier sanctions.

Carrier sanctions are actually a quite simple mechanism: if an airline accepts you onboard and you don’t have the required travel arrangements, they will have to pay a hefty fine for that. In practice, that means airlines will do everything they can to make sure that you will go through border control. They will force check-in staff and cabin crew to make decisions on their passengers’ rights that should be taken by immigration officers in accordance to the international due process and human rights. Carrier sanctions de facto externalize a process that should be a responsibility of states, which is examining each person’s case and determine whether they need international protection or refugee status.

Airline staff and cabin crew are not supposed to be making asylum and immigration decisions. That is not their job and it’s what they have been trained for. Furthermore, there is no way that a country can make sure that refugees’ rights have been respected if irregular border control is practiced thousands of miles away by external, private agents. However, they don’t seem to care too much.

The problem is not only the non-compliance with human rights. When they threat airlines with such sanctions and force them to act as irregular, uncontrolled immigrations officers, they are taking away from refugees the possibility of using a safe route to exit their unsafe countries. They are left on their own with the only option of unsafe boats, mafias, and human traffickers. States should no longer look the other way. Instead, they should take responsibility and stop forcing others do what they are supposed to do. After all, it’s only about complying with the basic principles of international law that we all have agreed upon.