Human Rights Watch Highlights Human Rights of Migrants

On December 19, 2025, Human Rights Watch (HRW) submitted a comprehensive briefing to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, outlining widespread rights violations affecting migrants in multiple regions.

The submission covers unlawful expulsions, abusive detention conditions, arbitrary detention of children, and externalization of migration control involving states such as the United States, countries in the Americas, Africa, the European Union, and Australia. These findings highlight the systemic challenges and risks faced by migrants and asylum seekers worldwide.

Understanding Human Rights Watch’s Findings On Migrant Rights

HRW’s submission highlights that since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has pursued stringent measures against irregular migration, including blocking access to asylum at its southern border and entering into bilateral agreements to transfer third-country nationals to cooperating states.

HRW documented mass expulsions of migrants, including children, to Panama and Costa Rica in early 2025, where individuals were denied due process and subjected to arbitrary detention in violation of international norms. Panama accepted 299 people, including families with children, while Costa Rica received 200 migrants, among them 81 children from multiple countries. Many later returned to their home countries under conditions that raise questions about voluntariness.

The submission also details the expulsion of more than 250 Venezuelans to El Salvador in March and April 2025, where they were held at the Center for Confinement of Terrorism, reportedly enduring arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, systematic torture, and sexual violence before being released as part of a prisoner exchange. HRW’s reporting underscores the serious human rights abuses these individuals face.

Human Rights Concerns In Africa, Europe, And The Middle East

HRW further noted the impact of 2025 agreements between the US and several African nations: including Rwanda, Eswatini, Ghana, and South Sudan under which third-country nationals have been expelled with limited transparency and safeguards.

The implementation of these opaque agreements, often tied to promised financial assistance, has led to arbitrary detention and risks of refoulement. For example, after Ghana accepted more than 40 West African deportees, some were subsequently expelled to their countries of origin, including a bisexual Gambian man, potentially violating non-refoulement protections due to persecution risks.

In Eswatini, deportees reportedly faced harsh conditions in detention at the Matsapha Correctional Complex. In Europe, HRW highlighted serious abuses against migrants attempting dangerous boat crossings from Africa’s northwest coast to Spain’s Canary Islands.

In Mauritania, EU-supported migration control efforts coincided with reports of violence, arbitrary arrests, inhumane detention, extortion, and collective expulsions of migrants and asylum seekers between 2020 and early 2025. These actions, often carried out by security forces including the coast guard and gendarmerie, occurred alongside training and equipment support from the EU and Spain, raising concerns about complicity in rights violations.

HRW also noted that in Tunisia, migrants faced systemic violence and collective expulsions, including incidents where Tunisian authorities forced migrants and asylum seekers into life-threatening conditions in the desert along the border with Algeria and Libya. Cooperation agreements between the EU and Tunisia, including a 2023 Memorandum of Understanding worth up to €1 billion, lacked adequate safeguards to prevent rights abuses.

In Lebanon, HRW documented cooperation between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Cypriot authorities that resulted in pushbacks of Syrian refugees to danger in Syria, with EU funding tied to border management efforts implicated in these practices.

Australia’s offshore detention regime has also drawn scrutiny, with new legislation expanding government authority to pay third countries to accept noncitizens, including refugees, without sufficient protections. In August 2025, Australia signed a deal with Nauru to expel about 350 individuals previously held offshore, despite a January 2025 UN Human Rights Committee finding that their earlier indefinite detention was arbitrary. HRW has previously documented severe abuse, neglect, and even deaths among refugees transferred to offshore facilities like Nauru.

Enforcement And Operational Impact

HRW’s submission outlines how externalization agreements and migration control cooperation have operationalized practices that undermine asylum access and due process. Migrants transferred under such arrangements often face detention without transparency, limited legal recourse, and heightened risks of refoulement. Children detained in Panama, Costa Rica, and other locations were held for weeks in conditions that breached international norms, underscoring systemic failures to protect vulnerable populations.

The rights of asylum seekers are further imperiled by coordinated policies that shift responsibility for protection to states lacking capacity or safeguards, diverting attention from legal pathways to seek asylum and eroding international standards designed to protect people fleeing persecution.

Key Takeaways

On December 19, 2025, Human Rights Watch submitted findings to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.
HRW documented mass expulsions of migrants and children to Panama and Costa Rica without due process.
Venezuelan migrants expelled to El Salvador reportedly endured arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance.
Agreements with African states have resulted in arbitrary detention and refoulement risks for deportees.
EU-supported migration controls in Mauritania and abuses in Tunisia and Lebanon highlight systemic rights violations.
Australia’s expanded offshore detention and third-country transfers raise serious compliance concerns.

Human Rights Watch’s submission to the UN underscores the urgent need for states to uphold international human rights standards in migration management. The documented practices, from mass expulsions and abusive detention conditions to externalization agreements lacking transparency and protections reveal a global pattern of migrant rights violations. Addressing these issues requires robust oversight, accountability, and adherence to due process and non-refoulement principles, particularly for children and other vulnerable groups.