GENEVA (18 June 2014) –Each year the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)  hosts Consultations with hundreds of civil society and NGO representatives from around the world.    This year more than 240 national and international NGO’s and over 460 participants convened in Geneva, Switzerland at the International Conference Center of Geneva to discuss the most pressing and important issues in the area of refugee protection.

Under the theme of “women’s leadership and participation”, which recognized that the number of female refugees and asylum seekers is increasing worldwide, IDC staff, members and partners convened at the 2014 Annual NGO Consultations to continue to shed light on the issue of refugee and asylum seeker detention worldwide.

On Wednesday, 18 June, a thematic session was held on Detention with the specific topic “Monitoring Places of Immigration Detention.”  The thematic session highlighted the production of a joint UNHCR / IDC / APT guide, and panelists included:

  • Grant Mitchell, Director, International Detention Coalition
  • Tanya Norton, Association for Prevention from Torture (APT)
  • Junita Calder, Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Asia-Pacific
  • Karin Keil, Hotline for Migrant Workers
  • Alice Edwards, Senior Legal Coordinator for the Division of International Protection, UNHCR

The session was moderated by IDC Advisory Committee Member, Alice Farmer of Human Rights Watch.

The publication “Monitoring Places of Immigration Detention: A Practical Guide” is available here.