WASHINGTON, DC — The international protection regime is under increasingly untenable pressure, and the obsolescence of the post-World War II policy architecture on which it relies is becoming more and more evident. The territorial asylum system, which requires asylum seekers to reach another country’s territory in order to seek protection, has proven itself to be a blunt tool with which to address the protection challenges of the 21st century. New crises, protracted displacement situations and expanding norms about who merits protection have created a growing population globally of individuals in need of humanitarian protection. At the same time, other mobility pressures—including those rooted in demographic shifts, economic inequality and climate change—have produced high levels of mixed migration, adding to the strain on border and asylum adjudication systems. In The End of Asylum? Evolving the Protection System to Meet 21st Century Challenges, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) sets out a transformative vision for how the international protection system can evolve, with a focus on the future of asylum. The report analyzes promising developments and best-in-class ideas around facilitating orderly entry, ensuring system efficiency and building regional capacity. It also examines how these elements could foster a system that is better at providing protection for those who need it while also securing public trust by reducing chaos at borders and ensuring that enforcement and the rule of law remain core elements. “There is an urgent need to shift the focus of protection responses away from an exclusive reliance on territorial asylum and toward a diversified set of policy tools,” MPI analysts Susan Fratzke, Meghan Benton, Andrew Selee, Emma Dorst and Samuel Davidoff-Gore write. “Territorial asylum will, and should, remain accessible as a safety valve, but states should seek to proactively facilitate access to protection as soon after and close to a displacement crisis as possible—and well before dangerous journeys become necessary.” To address the increasingly complex displacement challenges and mobility pressures, the report recommends governments should further lean into: - Creating safe and orderly avenues to access protection. Expanding refugee resettlement and complementary pathways (such as study and work opportunities) while also adopting more nimble approaches such as humanitarian visas or immigration parole (as occurred with the Homes for Ukraine program in the United Kingdom) would serve to incentivize legal over irregular migration—reducing dangerous journeys and easing border pressures.
- Adequately resourcing and streamlining asylum procedures and enforcement. To maintain territorial asylum as a viable option, governments must ensure asylum procedures are efficient and fair—swiftly providing protection where warranted and returning individuals found not to merit protection. Adequate staffing, financial resources and technological innovations are crucial. Effective border operations and group determinations for crisis responses can prevent backlogs and ensure swift processing.
- Expanding access to non-protection-based migration opportunities. Addressing economic and demographic migration pressures through legal migration pathways can reduce strain on asylum systems. Initiatives such as the Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) in the Americas, which offer protection and non-protection-based migration options closer to migrants’ origins, promote safe and legal mobility and thwart human smugglers.
- Developing regional capacity and protection strategies. Regional coordination is vital to addressing displacement effectively. Higher-income countries should support their neighbors in building protection and integration capacity. Regional initiatives such as the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection and the Quito Process exemplify strategic regional approaches to managing displacement and migration.
The report concludes the three-year Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World initiative undertaken by MPI and the Robert Bosch Stiftung. The initiative has sought to address challenges to asylum systems that are under immense pressure and seize the opportunity to explore and test new ways to facilitate access to protection that better support equity and result in more flexible, sustainable infrastructure. Earlier reports have examined meaningful ways to manage international protection needs at borders; offer flexible approaches to protection; build meaningful refugee participation in policymaking; assess the growing use of external processing and the role for digital tools in international protection, as well as the use of refugee travel documents; and sketched the difficulty shifting public narratives about refugees. Read today’s report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/asylum-system-21st-century. | 
