The draft Act on Granting International Protection to Aliens (VRKS), currently at its first reading in the Riigikogu, requires corrections. Some of these relate to the act’s references to European Union law and improving its clarity, but lawyers at the Estonian Human Rights Centre also highlight three significant substantive problems.

The new draft allows the safety of the child and the detention of parents to be taken into account as considerations when deciding on the detention of minor applicants for international protection. “In a democratic country with a functioning social protection system, it is not appropriate to detain vulnerable persons in order to ensure their safety, nor because a relative has been detained,” says Nora Kurik, refugee law attorney at EHRC.

The lawyers point out that the wording of the VRKS is also in obvious conflict with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Estonia’s Child Protection Act, and §§ 11 and 20 of the Constitution. “§ 20 of the Constitution sets out an exhaustive list of circumstances under which a person’s liberty may be restricted,” explains Kurik. “Detention for the purpose of ensuring a person’s safety is only permitted where the person may, for the listed reasons, pose a danger to themselves. There is therefore no basis in Estonian law for codifying such a ground for detention.”

The new draft also fails to take into account the recent position of the Supreme Court‘s Constitutional Review Chamber on ensuring the inviolability of family life. According to this position, a refugee must be able to reunite with their partner even where marriage or cohabitation was legally impossible in their country of origin. “On the basis of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Review Chamber’s position, the VRKS would be in conflict with the Constitution, and the President of the Republic would have the right to refuse to promulgate the act,” notes Uljana Ponomarjova, refugee law attorney at EHRC.

Among previously submitted recommendations, the advice of several consulted institutions to abandon the introduction of a county-level movement restriction for international protection applicants residing in accommodation centres has not been taken on board. The purpose of this restriction, which significantly interferes with the rights of people living in accommodation centres, remains unclear, as the explanatory materials fail to account for local circumstances — the small size of the Estonian state, the low number of applicants, and the location of services and employment outside the areas where accommodation centres are situated.

We thank the Riigikogu for the opportunity to submit the Estonian Human Rights Centre’s positions on the draft Act on Granting International Protection to Aliens, and encourage our proposals to be taken into consideration. The progress of the draft legislation can be followed here.