POLICY BRIEF Joseph Cripps From Pact to Practice: How to Implement Human Rights Monitoring What’s the Issue? Across Europe, civil society organisations, National Hu­man Rights Institutions, and international monitoring bodies have all independently documented how border zones have become witnesses to grave human rights vio­lations. By 2020, the erosion of the right to asylum had been well documented, with the systematic use of push­backs, torture, arbitrary detention, and even secret extra­judicial facilities(so-called“black sites”) emerging as standard elements of migration control at the EU’s exter­nal borders. Video footage widely circulated has con­firmed that migrants have been held incommunicado in ‘dog kennels’ 1 , showed masked men carrying out violent pushbacks, 2 and even the murder of a migrant by border guards. 3 In response to ongoing violations of human rights at EU borders and non-compliance of some Member States with existing EU law, a new EU asylum framework, the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, was proposed in 2020, adopted in April 2024, and is to be implemented by mid-2026. The Pact outlines a political and legislative roadmap to reform the Common European Asylum Sys­tem(CEAS). Although an Independent Monitoring Mech­anism was initially introduced as a safeguard to prevent pushbacks at external borders, 4 the final version adopted in 2024 limits fundamental rights monitoring to the new ­ly established screening and the accelerated asylum bor­der procedure, 5 which are to be carried out in closed fa­cilities near the EU’s external borders. To carry out their mandate, Independent Monitoring Me­chanisms should investigate allegations of fundamental rights violations in the screening and the border procedure, should have access to relevant locations, individuals and documents, and perform their tasks on the basis of on-the­spot, random, and unannounced checks. Monitoring me­1 The New York Times. 2020. We Are Like Animals Inside Greece’s Secret Site for Migrants. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/35sc67s5; The Guardian. 2020. Catastrophe for Hu­man Rights as Greece Steps Up Refugee Pushbacks. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/75xd6p8s  2  ECCHR. n.d. Footage of border officers enacting violent pushbacks. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/2b32y3f2 3  Forensic Architecture. 2020. The killing of Muhammad Gulzar. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/2pzph8sw 4  European Commission, 2020. Speech by Commissioner Johansson on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/bdyhntx7 5  Article 10.1. PE/20/2024/REV/1. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/mr48mzkc From Pact to Practice 1