Any person or people who face the possibility of being deprived of their liberty in immigration detention. This possibility, or risk, is context specific and must be locally determined. For example, depending on context, people could potentially be at risk of legal or arbitrary detention for reasons including their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, geographic location, contact with health, social welfare or criminal justice authorities, as well as their current migration status or circumstance within the migration process, among others. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• Understanding the ATD Landscape
• A Systems Change Strategy

Yes. An array of practices have been implemented worldwide and called  “alternatives to detention” by governments and other actors. These vary in the extent to which they respect, interfere with or violate human rights, and exist on a spectrum from more to less restrictive, as well as those that do not involve liberty restrictions at all. 

In line with our Principles for ATD, IDC works towards ATD that respects rights, reduces detention, is engagement not enforcement based, centers holistic support, and does not involve deprivation of liberty. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• Understanding the ATD Landscape
• IDC’s ATD Principles

Engagement-based ATD builds trust, supports empowerment, and promotes agency and well-being so people can actively participate in processes that affect their rights and future. Engagement-based ATD engages and works with people towards just and fair resolution of their case, in particular through case management. 

Engagement-based ATD can be contrasted with coercive approaches, which often emulate those from the criminal justice field and are an extension of states’ enforcement and security-based migration policies that ultimately criminalise migrants. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• IDC’s ATD Principles
• Building Blocks of ATD

IDC members and partners work on ATD for people with a range of intersectional identities and systemic experiences, such as children, women, LGBTI+ people, as well as those also experiencing racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination, including people seeking asylum, stateless people, long-term residents, people with convictions, people with expired visas, victims of trafficking, adoptees, migrant workers, undocumented migrants, and many others who are impacted by immigration detention in different parts of the world. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

IDC’s position is that ATD must respect the right to personal freedom and any liberty or other rights restrictions imposed on people as ATD must be subject to the same stringent safeguards as detention. This includes that they must only be used where there is a legal ground for detention and must be subject to procedural safeguards, including regular judicial review. ATD must not be used to impose rights restrictions on individuals who would not otherwise be detained. 

At the same time, for IDC, ATD are broader than liberty restrictions and can involve a range of mechanisms, including support and placement options, which together reduce detention by ensuring that people can resolve their migration cases in the community.

ATD therefore include approaches based on engagement rather than enforcement, which do not rely on rights restrictions but rather contribute to ensuring a range of rights while supporting migration governance outcomes. For example, ATD interventions can involve establishing referral pathways to connect individuals to existing services available for migrants or within broader social assistance services. ATD can also involve developing new support mechanisms, for example NGO-run case management pilots for specific groups separate from migration enforcement.

Rather than being “applied” to people, these approaches provide community support and placement options which may be relevant as ATD for individuals in the context of legal detention decisions, as well as more broadly for people at risk of detention and potentially as positive practice in the larger migration governance system. To the extent that they do not interfere with rights, IDC does not see such approaches as being limited to the context of legal detention decisions.

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention:

• Understanding the ATD Landscape
• A Systems Change Strategy

ATD is relevant in contexts in which immigration detention is a practical reality that needs to be addressed. IDC members work in countries across the world, which differ greatly in terms of their migration contexts and systems, use of immigration detention, experiences of people impacted by detention, and the openness of governments to engage with civil society. They use ATD as a strategy in contexts of mandatory detention, transit, as well as destination countries where immigration detention is used predominantly in the context of return. 

In terms of contextual political considerations, in contexts with limited civic space, focusing on ATD has allowed groups to approach governments when directly criticising immigration detention isn’t politically viable. Alternatively, in more democratic societies, ATD advocacy has been used in conjunction with more publicly critical approaches to effectively drive change.

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

ATD has the greatest potential to contribute to change when there is trust and collaboration among different actors in developing ATD, particularly including migrant communities, civil society and other actors. This process of change involves different levels and branches of government relevant for implementing ATD, for example city, state and national authorities, as well as health, social welfare, child protection and foreign affairs authorities.

When deciding which strategies to utilise as civil society, IDC believes that migrant and refugee-led groups and initiatives at the grassroots level, particularly leaders with lived experience of detention, must be supported and centered in these strategic decisions, as they are the ones driving change on the ground, and best understand the challenges facing their communities, as well as the potential solutions. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

ATD approaches that better ensure rights, dignity and wellbeing for individuals and communities, while supporting legitimate migration governance objectives such as increasing people’s engagement with migration processes and achieving fair and timely case resolution. 

There is ample evidence internationally that ATD can achieve better outcomes for individuals and communities, as well as governments. IDC’s own research identified factors that contribute to successful ATD in this sense. These elements are brought together in our framework for developing rights-based ATD as part of a systems change strategy, the Community Assessment and Placement (CAP) Model. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles
• Build Blocks of ATD

Our focus is on ATD that is tailored to address the needs and complex realities within specific contexts, and that work better for individuals and communities, as well as for governments. We see ATD as involving a range of interventions in different areas of migration governance that reduce detention and progressively build systems that don’t rely on detention, better ensuring rights, dignity and freedom for people and communities. These elements are brought together in our framework for developing rights-based ATD, the CAP model. Further, we aim to realise and be guided by the following principles in our advocacy to develop and implement ATD:

• ATD must respect human rights
• ATD must reduce immigration detention
• ATD must be based on engagement not enforcement
• ATD must involve holistic support
• ATD cannot involve deprivation of liberty

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

IDC uses these principles to develop and enhance ATD that can contribute to systems change to reduce and end detention. We therefore aim to realise and be guided by these principles in our advocacy to develop and implement ATD. 

At the same time, we recognise that there are no perfect examples of ATD, and not all ATD will meet IDC’s principles. Instead, locally tailored solutions need to be continually assessed and strengthened with these principles and rights-based frameworks in mind, in order to address the complex needs of individuals and the realities of the specific context.

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• IDC’s ATD Principles
• Build Blocks of ATD

Measures that amount to deprivation of liberty – either individually or cumulatively – are simply de facto detention, sometimes referred to as “alternative forms of detention”. IDC believes that these cannot be considered ATD, regardless of whether they are labeled ATD by governments or not. A few possible examples are:

• Closed shelters or reception facilities 
• Remote or physically isolated locations 
• Screening at international borders or transit zones
• Electronic monitoring or tagging
• Onerous conditions or restrictions

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• IDC’s ATD Principles
• Building Blocks of ATD

Using ATD as a strategy responds to the urgent and growing problem of immigration detention and the fact that many governments around the world continue to detain hundreds of thousands of people. 

Using the language of “ATD” is a strategic choice, linking our solutions to the practical reality of detention and processes to reduce and ultimately to end it. It can also be a strategic choice to not explicitly use the term in certain contexts, while continuing to work on community options and interventions in a range of areas of migration governance which reduce the use of detention. 

In the end, the aim is to not need the term “ATD” at all. As we move along our theory of change, and see detention progressively reducing and non-detention approaches becoming the norm, the term ATD will become obsolete – in the same way that many social movement terms have adapted over time once political conditions and realities on the ground change in response. 

Finally, it is important to note that this strategy is only relevant to contexts in which immigration detention is a practical reality that needs to be addressed. Contexts that already do not use immigration detention can provide learning and inspiration for using ATD as a strategy to reduce and end detention in other places.

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

It means providing a vision and roadmap towards migration governance approaches that are based on values of human rights, fairness, agency and freedom. This involves bringing about changes in different areas of migration governance through the implementation of rights-based ATD, in order to reduce detention and progressively build systems that don’t rely on detention at all. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

IDC sees ATD programmes as a way to drive transformative change through realistic, incremental steps to reduce detention in the given context. Initially providing pathways for release and community-based options, ATD programmes fundamentally prove that it’s possible to resolve people’s cases in the community without detention. 

The aim is that stand alone ATD programmes provide learning and evidence, including through Monitoring and Evaluation, and have a ripple effect as they are then expanded and mainstreamed into the broader system, with the aim to eventually phase out immigration detention entirely. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

IDC believes that in order to ensure a healthy and vibrant ecosystem of change, diverse approaches from a range of actors are absolutely necessary in the movement to end immigration detention. These strategies can include, but are not limited to, campaigning and advocating to:

• Release people from immigration detention
• Close specific detention centres
• End corporate investment in immigration detention
• Reform immigration and asylum law 
• Change policy through strategic litigation
• End immigration detention of certain groups to begin with, for example children
• Monitor places of immigration detention
• Change public narratives through strategic communications
• Implement rights-based and community-based ATD

None of these approaches should be seen as exclusive of one another, and they can and do complement each other in many contexts. When executed with strategic coordination, seemingly divergent strategies that are implemented by different groups can intersect in truly transformative and effective ways, by simultaneously pushing governments away from detention and drawing them towards rights-based ATD.

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• IDC’s ATD Principles

There are many ways that civil society can get involved with using ATD as a strategy to reduce and end immigration detention in their contexts. To start, possible steps and actions can include: identifying advocacy interventions and potential allies; building a coalition of interested actors; increasing awareness of ATD alongside other strategies to end immigration detention; and importantly, developing context analysis and research on detention and ATD.

Following these initial steps, there are a range of options which groups can choose from to fit their context, strengths, expertise and resources. While some may prefer focusing on direct government engagement, others may prefer tactics such as community organising, media and communications, research and documentation, or technical training and support. 

Read more about this in the following sections of Using ATD as a Strategy Towards Ending Immigration Detention: 

• A Systems Change Strategy
• Building Blocks of ATD