A travel document and passport is a crucial form of identity, without it a person may struggle to show that they are from the country they say they are from. 70,000 people applied for protection, from Ukraine and around the world in Ireland, in 2022, a small proportion did not have a document. We should be careful about overstating that being undocumented is a widespread phenomenon. It is also worth noting, that reports state that people did not provide a document. We recommend caution around an automatic assumption that it was destroyed.
Article 31 of the Refugee Convention14 states a person seeking refugee status must still have their application processed even if he or she has entered a state illegally. The International Protection Act states that a person who is at the frontier of the State (whether lawfully or unlawfully) may make an application for international protection. This rationale exists because there is no visa to claim asylum, and it is very difficult for a person from a refugee-producing country to get a visa. People are often forced to travel in a way that requires them to travel in illegal or irregular ways, including using a smuggler who may take the passport back off the person when travelling. A person, in our experience, may not produce a document for several reasons:
Fear of retribution: For some, it will not have been possible or safe for them to obtain passports or visas to travel. For example, in Afghanistan passports were not being issued for months, and people put their lives at risk by attending the offices to seek a passport. For this reason, some people will have no option but to rely on a false documents to travel. They fear retribution if this is discovered and do not feel comfortable disclosing documents.
Fear of immediate removal: some people may fear if they produce the document they will be immediately removed back to the country of origin or the country from which they have travelled from.
Smugglers and traffickers: People are often forced to travel in a way that requires them to travel in illegal or irregular ways, including using a smuggler who may take the passport back off the person when travelling.
It is worth noting that safe pathways were opened for people fleeing Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian invasion. People were allowed to board flights with birth certificates or internal identity documents. Visa rules were significantly loosened. This was a commendable response.
Section 20 of the International Protection Act does give the power to arrest someone if they have not made reasonable efforts to establish their identity or if they have destroyed their travel document.