The Right to Seek Asylum: Interception at Sea and the Principle of Non-Refoulement

First, let me begin with a particular word of thanks to the Government of Italy, for ensuring the topicality of my talk tonight .... But secondly, let me recall an event now nearly thirty years ago, when, on 29 September 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12324 on the ‘Interdiction of Illegal Aliens’ – the model, perhaps, for all that has followed.1 Like many who were then working for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I was struck by the incongruity, the inconsistency, between this measure and the resolute stand taken by the United States on the protection of Indochinese refugees in South East Asia, for whom first asylum, non-discrimination and at least temporary admission were considered the essential minimum. With all that has happened since, and given today's obsession with so-called irregular movements of people, with smuggling, trafficking, asylum and the search for...