his past spring, the world sat transfixed as pro-democracy movements swept through the Middle East. Witnessing the bravery of protesters who took to the streets and demanded political reform was inspiring, but for the tens of thousands of North Africans who sought to escape the chaos by fleeing to Europe, the Arab Awakening produced a bleak outcome. To stem the tide of migrants from Tunisia, many of whom crossed the Mediterranean by boat, Italy announced in April that it would institute tougher border control measures; 650 Tunisians were deported in the first few weeks of the operation, and Italy stopped granting temporary visas to newcomers. The Tunisians, many of whom had risked their lives to leave, were not asked whether they feared persecution in their homeland, a factor that distinguishes asylum seekers from other migrants. Amnesty International was quick to criticize Italy’s actions, pointing out the many ways the country had violated “international, regional, and domestic human rights and refugee law.” To anyone familiar with recent Italian history, the episode had an air of déjà vu. Although the country’s constitution includes the right to asylum, in 2009 Italian authorities intercepted numerous boats carrying thousands of African migrants and sent them back to Libya, their point of departure, without determining whether those on board had legitimate claims for asylum.

Italy hardly stands alone in its treatment of refugees. Many nations have grown increasingly intolerant of asylum seekers, those who make it to a safe country and file refugee claims. Yet even as opportunities for asylum dwindle, the demand for that protection persists. More than 837,000 claims were filed around the world in 2010, by people running from violence in nations such as Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan. The world urgently needs a country to set an example by upholding the rights of these migrants. Given current trends, it won’t likely be the United States, Australia, or any European state. Canada, however, has distinctive legal and cultural conventions that could enable it to develop a new, more humane asylum system. So how might we extend justice to refugees, and live up to what is highest and best in our traditions of law and belonging?

he modern institution of asylum arose after World War II, when European nations had to contend with millions of people displaced by the conflict and redrawn borders; hundreds of thousands remained trapped in camps for years. International efforts to solve the problem resulted in the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which committed signatory states to recognize that refugees have the right of “non-refoulement,” that is, to not be returned to a place of danger.

Today, however, they are routinely refouled by countries that have vowed not to do so. The 9/11 terrorist attacks escalated the poor treatment of immigrants and refugees, but the most exclusionary actions predate 2001. For decades, the American response to Haitians trying to reach Florida in rickety boats has been to send the US Coast Guard to intercept them at sea and send them back. In 1981, when the government instituted this interdiction policy, over concerns about border security, it promised to conduct shipboard interviews to identify refugees. Yet Amnesty International and other NGOs have noted copious problems with the interview procedures, and that’s if the Coast Guard even bothers to perform them. Some 1,850 Haitians were interdicted in 2005; nine were interviewed, and only one was eventually recognized as a refugee. Of the tens of thousands who have been returned to Haiti, hundreds if not thousands have likely been legitimate refugees.

Other countries have followed suit. Australia has engaged in the widespread detention of refugees since the 1990s. In 2001, when a Norwegian freighter rescued more than 400 asylum seekers (predominantly Afghans) from another vessel sinking south of Indonesia, Australia prevented the freighter from entering its waters. (After being sent to an Australian-sponsored detention centre on Nauru, a Pacific micro-state, most of the asylum seekers were resettled in New Zealand and, eventually, Australia.) Meanwhile, the United Kingdom reformed its asylum system on six occasions between 1993 and 2006, each time making it more restrictive. According to the UK charity Asylum Aid, British refugee cases are now judged according to a standard of proof “which is not only impossible to obtain in circumstances of flight, but contrary to international law.”

A 2008 survey of the world’s worst places for refugees listed the European Union alongside Bangladesh and Iraq. According to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which conducted the study, “European countries have crafted policies that essentially deny access by making it as difficult as possible to enter their territory. Countries on Europe’s periphery had the harshest policies, protecting their wealthy neighbours to the north and west, often for money.” Indeed, it is increasingly common to hear of asylum seekers being trapped in European airports for months. In one case, a Palestinian man named Ibrahim Zijad spent almost seven months in the transit zone of Prague’s airport, living off meal tickets provided by a Czech airline and washing himself in public restrooms, before finally receiving asylum in Germany.

Ironically, the countries that can best afford to admit refugees are the least likely to do so. In 2010, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated the global refugee population at more than 10 million. That year, 358,800 asylum claims were made in industrialized countries. Of those, Canada received 23,200, low for us. The overwhelming majority of refugees lived in the developing world: Kenya was home to over 400,000, while Pakistan, Iran, and Syria each had refugee populations of more than one million.

One of the primary reasons Western states are reluctant to liberalize their policies is an apprehension about granting asylum to people who are not refugees but are trying to pass themselves off as such. Particular countries have been known to produce large numbers of doubtful claims, as was the case with Bulgaria and Romania after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Another rationale for tougher measures is protection of the welfare state. Relaxed policies, the view holds, would overwhelm a receiving country’s ability to provide such services as health care and education. Furthermore, asylum seekers are often seen as a threat to national identity and social cohesion. Fostering such xenophobic views has become the stock-in-trade of politicians like France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, Patrick Buchanan of the US, and Australia’s Pauline Hanson. These fringe figures rarely lead governments, but their populist appeal has been noted by mainstream parties, who have adopted their own anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies. It was no coincidence that Australia turned away the migrants on the Norwegian freighter shortly after Hanson’s One Nation party mounted its first insurgency in the polls. And because the displaced can’t vote, they pose little risk to politicians who make a show of getting tough on asylum policy, even when doing so has a disastrous impact on genuine refugees.

ne serious negative effect of the collapse of Western asylum is that it has emboldened governments in the developing world to enact their own anti-refugee measures. In the early 1990s, for example, the American interdiction policy became the subject of a legal challenge, brought forward by a group of lawyers and law students representing Haitians who had been denied entry to the US; ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the policy was legal, which spurred other nations to toughen their own laws. The government of Thailand said the American policy demonstrated that the principle of asylum was a “Machiavellian device designed to satisfy and calm the conscience” of Western governments. Soon after, it expelled thousands of Burmese and Cambodian refugees.

An even more dramatic shift occurred in Tanzania in 1995, when roughly 40,000 Burundians tried to enter the country. Once one of the most welcoming African states for refugees, Tanzania responded by closing the border to prevent half of the Burundians from entering, and announced plans to expel all refugees living in the country. Speaking at a conference six months after the border closure, Tanzania’s foreign minister singled out the American interdiction program as a precedent that had inspired his government. According to a report of the minister’s speech, “He said that it was a double standard to expect weaker countries to live up to their humanitarian obligations when major powers did not do so whenever their own national rights and interests were at stake.” As Arafat Jamal, a former refugee analyst with the UN, has noted, “Nations that absorb the most refugees in Africa will often cite the EU or US tightening their policies as a rationale for them to tighten their own policies.” Modelling a better example to governments in the developing world, where refugees number in the millions, would give a state a form of moral suasion most Western countries lack. It is also in every nation’s interest to see better treatment of refugees in poor countries, which would reduce the strain on Western peacekeeping efforts and asylum systems, as well as inhibit the instability and extremism that often accompany refugee crises.