Agenda: Migrants' Human Rights in Immigration Enforcement and Border Control Policies with Special Emphasis on Combating Xenophobia
Delhi MUN 2026 ·
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is the principal intergovernmental body within the United Nations system responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe. Established in 2006 by General Assembly resolution A/RES/60/251 as a successor to the former Commission on Human Rights, the Council is composed of 47 Member States elected by the General Assembly on the basis of equitable geographical distribution. Members serve three-year terms and are subject to re-election, with a maximum of two consecutive terms.
The Council meets in Geneva for three regular sessions per year — in March, June, and September — and can convene special sessions when required by a one-third vote of its membership. Its mandate encompasses the full spectrum of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as the right to development. The Council works through a variety of mechanisms: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which assesses the human rights record of every UN member state on a cycle of approximately four and a half years; Special Procedures, which include Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts, and Working Groups appointed to address either specific country situations or thematic issues; and treaty body reviews, which examine state compliance with the core international human rights instruments.
At Delhi MUN 2026, delegates will simulate a session of the UNHRC, applying UNA-USA procedural rules to deliberate on one of the most pressing contemporary human rights challenges: the treatment of migrants in the context of immigration enforcement and border control, with a specific focus on combating xenophobia.
Global human mobility has reached historically unprecedented levels. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that over 280 million people currently live outside their country of birth, a figure that includes economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, and those displaced by conflict or climate change. The sheer scale and visibility of migration — combined with the political salience of border security as a domestic electoral issue in many states — has produced a regulatory environment in which immigration enforcement operations frequently come into direct conflict with binding international human rights standards.
States have an undisputed sovereign right to control entry to their territory and to enforce immigration law. However, that right is not absolute. It is constrained by international human rights law, refugee law, and customary international law. Where enforcement operations involve the use of force, detention, or the return of individuals to situations of risk, states are bound by the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (ICCPR Art. 7; CAT Art. 3), the right to liberty and security of the person (ICCPR Art. 9), the principle of non-refoulement (1951 Refugee Convention Art. 33; ICCPR; CAT), the prohibition on collective expulsion (Protocol 4 to the ECHR; ICCPR Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 15), and the prohibition on racial discrimination (ICERD; ICCPR Art. 26).
The agenda before this committee captures two intersecting dimensions of this challenge. The first is operational and legal: how states design and implement immigration enforcement and border control policies in ways that respect or violate the human rights of migrants, including those who are in an irregular situation. The second is social and cultural: how public hostility towards migrants — manifested in xenophobic rhetoric, hate speech, and discriminatory policy — both reflects and reinforces the normalisation of rights violations. Delegates are asked to address both dimensions in an integrated way, recognising that legal reform without social change, or social change without legal accountability, will be insufficient.
The border — whether a land crossing, a coastline, an airport, or a virtual checkpoint in extraterritorial waters — is the site at which state sovereign authority and individual human rights most acutely intersect. OHCHR's Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights at International Borders, published in 2014, constitute the primary authoritative framework for understanding what human-rights-compliant border governance requires in practice. The Recommended Principles affirm that all persons at or near international borders, regardless of their nationality, immigration status, or the manner of their arrival, are entitled to the full protection of applicable international human rights law. This includes the right to seek asylum, the right not to be subjected to collective expulsion, the right to an individual assessment of their situation, access to legal counsel, and access to consular notification.
Border governance arrangements have become considerably more complex in recent decades. States have increasingly moved enforcement activities offshore or upstream — funding and training third-country border forces, deploying naval vessels in international waters, and negotiating readmission agreements that effectively transfer migration management to transit states with weaker human rights protections. The human rights implications of these arrangements — often described as "externalisation" — are a central concern of this committee. The key legal question is whether states that fund, direct, or otherwise exercise effective control over enforcement operations in extraterritorial settings retain human rights obligations in respect of the individuals affected by those operations, even where the operations are technically conducted by a third state. OHCHR and multiple treaty bodies have consistently answered this question affirmatively, applying the principle of effective control derived from Articles 2(1) and 2(3) of the ICCPR and equivalent provisions in other instruments.
Delegates should consider the specific situation of migrants in mixed flows — where refugees, asylum seekers, trafficking victims, unaccompanied minors, and economic migrants travel alongside one another, often using the same routes and the same smugglers — and the obligation of states to identify and differentiate among these populations at the border rather than applying a uniform enforcement response.
The principle of non-refoulement — derived from the French refouler, meaning to push back or repel — is the cornerstone of international refugee and human rights protection. In its foundational form, enshrined in Article 33(1) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, it prohibits the expulsion or return of a refugee to "the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." Under international human rights law, the principle has a broader scope: Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture absolutely prohibits the return of any person to a state where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be in danger of being subjected to torture; the Human Rights Committee has interpreted ICCPR Article 7 similarly; and the ECHR has been applied by the European Court of Human Rights to prohibit return to situations of real risk of treatment prohibited by Article 3.
The operationalisation of non-refoulement is challenged most directly by the practice of pushbacks — the interception of migrants and asylum seekers, often at sea or at land borders, and their forcible return to the country they departed from or to international waters, without any individual assessment of protection needs. Pushbacks have been documented across multiple regions, including in the Mediterranean, at European land borders, at the US-Mexico border, and in the waters of the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. They have been carried out both by the border forces of the destination state and — increasingly — by third-state proxies operating pursuant to bilateral agreements or EU-funded capacity building programmes. When conducted without individual assessment, pushbacks constitute a form of collective expulsion prohibited under international law regardless of the immigration status of the individuals concerned.
The legal concept of collective expulsion is distinct from individual return decisions. The prohibition on collective expulsion under international and regional human rights instruments prohibits the expulsion of a group of non-nationals as a collective, without an examination of the particular circumstances of each individual case. The European Court of Human Rights in Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy (2012) found that Italy's practice of intercepting migrants at sea and returning them to Libya without individual assessment violated both the prohibition on collective expulsion and the principle of non-refoulement. The Court's reasoning is widely regarded as the leading international judicial statement on these issues.
For delegates, the key analytical question is how the international community can design accountability mechanisms that apply to pushback operations — which are by their nature conducted at sea or in remote locations, often in the absence of witnesses, documentation, or access for civil society monitors — and how the responsibilities of funding states, directing states, and executing states should be allocated under international law.
Immigration detention — the administrative detention of non-nationals for the purpose of managing or enforcing immigration status — is a pervasive feature of contemporary border governance. It is used as a tool to facilitate deportation and removal, to deter irregular arrivals, and to process asylum claims. Global estimates suggest that on any given day, several hundred thousand people are held in immigration detention worldwide, in facilities ranging from dedicated immigration removal centres to repurposed prisons, police stations, and makeshift camps.
The legal framework governing immigration detention is grounded in the right to liberty and security of the person under ICCPR Article 9, which provides that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary detention. The Human Rights Committee has consistently held that the detention of migrants is not inherently arbitrary but becomes so when it is not necessary, reasonable, and proportionate in all the circumstances, and when it is not subject to regular judicial review. States are required to demonstrate a legitimate purpose for detention, to use the least restrictive measure available, and to ensure that detention is subject to periodic judicial or quasi-judicial review.
CMW General Comment No. 5 (2021) provides the most comprehensive and authoritative interpretation of migrants' rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. It affirms that immigration detention should be genuinely a measure of last resort, used only when alternatives have been considered and found inadequate, and that detention solely on the basis of irregular migration status is arbitrary per se. The Comment identifies a range of community-based alternatives to detention — including case management programmes, reporting requirements, supervised release, and open reception facilities — that have been successfully implemented by a range of states and which achieve immigration enforcement objectives with significantly less restriction of fundamental rights.
A particularly serious dimension of immigration detention concerns children. In 2017, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on Migrant Workers issued joint guidance affirming that the detention of children for immigration enforcement purposes constitutes a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child under all circumstances, and calling on states to immediately move to end child immigration detention. Despite this unequivocal normative statement, children continue to be detained in immigration facilities across multiple regions, including in family units with their parents and as unaccompanied minors. Delegates should be prepared to engage with both the principled prohibition on child detention and the practical challenges of transitioning to community-based alternatives in contexts of high-volume mixed migration flows.
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Immigration enforcement inherently involves forms of categorisation — distinguishing between nationals and non-nationals, between those with valid status and those without, between those who are admissible and those who are not. The critical human rights concern arises when these enforcement decisions are influenced not by objective, individualised criteria but by racial, ethnic, national, or religious characteristics — a practice known as racial profiling.
CERD General Recommendation No. 36 (2020) on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials constitutes the most directly applicable normative instrument for this committee's deliberations. The General Recommendation defines racial profiling broadly to encompass the use of racial, ethnic, national, or religious characteristics as a factor — even a partial one — in decisions about whom to stop, search, investigate, or detain for immigration purposes. It affirms that racial profiling is incompatible with the prohibition on racial discrimination under ICERD regardless of whether there is a discriminatory intent, because the discriminatory effect alone is sufficient to constitute a violation. The Recommendation calls on states to adopt explicit legislative prohibitions on racial profiling in law enforcement contexts, including immigration enforcement; to collect disaggregated data on stops, searches, and immigration enforcement actions; to establish effective complaint and accountability mechanisms; and to ensure that law enforcement personnel receive adequate training on the prohibition of racial profiling.
Racial profiling in immigration enforcement intersects with broader patterns of systemic racial discrimination documented across multiple contexts. Internal enforcement operations — which target migrants not at the border but within the territory of the state — tend to concentrate their effects on visibly racialised communities, creating a climate of fear and suspicion that affects the entire community, including citizens and legal residents who share ethnic, national, or religious characteristics with irregular migrants. This produces a chilling effect on access to healthcare, education, and legal services, as migrants avoid contact with authorities for fear of detection and detention.
Delegates should consider what institutional safeguards are necessary to prevent racial profiling in immigration enforcement, how accountability systems can be designed that do not rely solely on individual complaint mechanisms (which are notoriously underused by the most vulnerable populations), and what role the UNHRC's own mechanisms — including the UPR and Special Procedures — can play in monitoring state compliance with CERD General Recommendation No. 36.
Xenophobia — broadly understood as fear, hostility, and rejection of persons perceived as foreign — is not merely a social attitude but a driver of concrete rights violations. When xenophobic attitudes are expressed by political leaders and public figures, amplified by media coverage that frames migration as a crisis, a threat, or an invasion, and legitimised through discriminatory policy, they contribute directly to the normalisation of enforcement practices that violate human rights. The committee's mandate explicitly includes combating xenophobia, recognising that the legal and operational dimensions of migration enforcement cannot be addressed in isolation from the social and political context in which they occur.
The international legal framework on hate speech is anchored in Article 20(2) of the ICCPR, which requires states to prohibit by law any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence. This provision is complemented by ICERD Article 4, which requires states to criminalise the dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred and incitement to racial discrimination. The Rabat Plan of Action (2012), developed under OHCHR auspices, provides a six-part threshold test for determining when expression crosses the line from protected speech to prohibited hate speech: context, speaker, intent, content and form, extent of the speech, and likelihood and imminence of harm.
In the digital age, hate speech targeting migrants spreads rapidly across social media platforms, often in forms that are algorithmically amplified. This creates a novel regulatory challenge: how to apply international standards on hate speech to online content without unduly restricting freedom of expression, and what responsibilities platform companies bear alongside states. The UN Global Compact for Migration (Objective 17) calls on states to promote evidence-based, human-rights-compliant public discourse on migration, countering xenophobia and hate speech through education, public information campaigns, and engagement with media and civil society. However, voluntary commitments under the Global Compact have produced uneven results, and delegates should consider whether stronger treaty-based or Council-level commitments are required.
The committee should also engage with the specific relationship between political rhetoric on migration and the operational behaviour of law enforcement. Research consistently shows that when political leaders use dehumanising or threat-based language about migrants, it correlates with increased hostility among border and immigration enforcement officials, reduced compliance with due process obligations, and greater tolerance of excessive force. Addressing the public narrative dimension of this agenda is therefore not a peripheral concern but a necessary condition for improving human rights outcomes at borders and in detention.
The international human rights treaty system provides a set of monitoring and accountability mechanisms that are directly relevant to the UNHRC's work on migrants' rights. The core treaty bodies with jurisdiction over migration-related rights include: the Human Rights Committee (ICCPR); the Committee Against Torture (CAT); the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD); the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW), which monitors compliance with the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which has addressed the specific vulnerabilities of migrant women.
The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW), adopted by the General Assembly in 1990, is the most comprehensive international human rights instrument specifically addressing migrant workers. However, ratification remains limited — as of 2025, the Convention has been ratified by 59 states, most of them origin rather than destination countries — reflecting the political resistance of major immigration destination states to binding obligations that would constrain their enforcement flexibility.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted by the General Assembly by resolution A/RES/73/195 on 19 December 2018, represents the first-ever intergovernmental agreement covering all dimensions of international migration. It sets out 23 Objectives and identifies a range of actions that states can take to achieve them, covering the full migration cycle from pre-departure to return and reintegration. The Global Compact is explicitly grounded in international human rights law and reaffirms the applicability of the full range of human rights to migrants regardless of status. However, it is not a legally binding instrument: it is a political commitment. Its implementation and review are monitored through the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF), which meets every four years.
The relationship between the UNHRC and the Global Compact is an important structural issue for delegates to consider. While the Compact provides a comprehensive policy framework, the Council's treaty-based mechanisms — particularly the UPR, Special Procedures, and its engagement with treaty bodies — provide the only genuinely binding accountability tools. Delegates should consider how the Council can leverage its institutional authority to push for stronger implementation of Compact Objective 11 (on non-discriminatory and rights-based immigration management), Objective 13 (on alternatives to immigration detention), Objective 17 (on eliminating all forms of discrimination and promoting an evidence-based public discourse), and Objective 21 (on using safe and dignified return and readmission processes).
Delegates should be familiar with the range of institutional tools available to the UNHRC when crafting resolutions and recommendations on migrants' rights and immigration enforcement. The Council has three primary mechanisms through which it exercises its mandate.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is the Council's flagship mechanism for holding all 193 UN member states accountable for their human rights performance. Every state undergoes a UPR review every four and a half years. Reviews are based on a national report submitted by the state under review, an OHCHR compilation of information from treaty bodies and Special Procedures, and a stakeholder summary drawing on civil society submissions. The outcome is a report containing recommendations that states can accept, note, or partially accept. While UPR recommendations are not legally binding, they carry significant political weight and acceptance rates have been used as indicators of state willingness to improve human rights performance. Delegates should consider whether the UPR framework can be strengthened specifically with respect to migration-related recommendations, for example by establishing thematic clusters on immigration enforcement and by tracking implementation more rigorously between review cycles.
Special Procedures are independent experts appointed by the Council to monitor and report on specific human rights issues or country situations. Two Special Procedures are directly relevant to this committee's agenda: the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants and the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Both mandate holders conduct country visits, issue communications to states about specific alleged violations, and present annual thematic reports to the Council and the General Assembly. The Council can strengthen Special Procedures through resolutions that broaden their mandate, call for urgent country visits in response to specific situations, or create new thematic mandates to address gaps in coverage.
Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-Finding Missions are the Council's most powerful investigative tool, established in response to serious or systematic human rights violations. They have been deployed for country-specific situations (Syria, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Israel/Palestine) and have produced reports that have subsequently informed criminal accountability processes. Delegates should consider whether the documented scale of pushback operations, deaths at sea, and conditions in immigration detention across multiple regions warrants the establishment of a thematic fact-finding mechanism under Council auspices.
In drafting resolutions, delegates should seek to combine operational recommendations addressed to states — on ending pushbacks, prohibiting child detention, implementing alternatives to detention, and enacting explicit legislative prohibitions on racial profiling — with institutional recommendations that strengthen the Council's own monitoring capacity. Resolutions that merely reaffirm existing norms without specifying monitoring mechanisms, reporting requirements, or accountability processes rarely produce durable change.
Primary sources from OHCHR, treaty bodies, and the United Nations recommended for delegate research preparation.
OHCHR's central hub on migration and human rights, covering thematic priorities, publications, and the work of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
OHCHR guidance on the human rights of migrants at transit and international borders, including pushbacks, rescue at sea, and reception conditions.
OHCHR's Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights at International Borders — the primary normative framework for human-rights-compliant border governance.
OHCHR expert paper on the non-refoulement principle under international human rights law — essential reading for delegates working on border pushbacks and returns.
The full text of the Global Compact for Migration adopted by the UN General Assembly in resolution A/RES/73/195 on 19 December 2018.
Mandate, reports, and communications of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants — a key UNHRC mechanism for agenda research.
Mandate and reports of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
CERD General Recommendation No. 36 on preventing and combating racial profiling by law enforcement officials, directly applicable to immigration enforcement contexts.
CMW General Comment No. 5 on migrants' rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention, including guidance on alternatives to detention and the prohibition on child immigration detention.
OHCHR's UPR home page — the mechanism through which all UN member states' human rights records, including migration-related issues, are periodically reviewed by the Council.
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