Human rights under temporary protection in the EU? : the EU temporary protection directive’s minimum standards of treatment as implemented for women and children fleeing Ukraine to Ireland

Abstract

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, almost eight million have fled from Ukraine to the EU, triggering the activation of the community’s long-dormant Temporary Protection Directive (TP Directive), an instrument designed with an aim of providing immediate rights’ and entitlement’ access to displaced persons, the majority, in this instance, being women and children. This thesis asks about the extent to which the EU’s TP Directive fosters human rights protection for women and children fleeing from Ukraine to the case study country of Ireland in the implementation by this Member States of the Directive’s Minimum Standards of Treatment (MST). It is explained that Temporary Protection Beneficiaries (TPBs) are located in a middle-ground between asylum seekers and refugees. While having strong human rights claims through the TPD, and while Temporary Protection as a governance tool is designed to help alleviate strain on Member State’s asylum processing procedures, ‘mass influx’ events can cause state capacity challenges in other areas that may inhibit the fulfilment of the Directive’s MST obligations. This broad-based study reveals the TP regime’s emancipatory potential for access to migration status, employment and economic and social rights. Yet the ability to fulfil these goals is significantly hampered by state capacity issues, manifest in Ireland particularly in housing rights, which negatively impact on women’s and children’s ability to access other of the Directive’s MST entitlements