A/HRC/62/35 concluded and operations continue to expand. Externalization agreements and arrangements carry a high risk of human rights violations and have severe impacts on persons in vulnerable situations, including children, entail gendered risks, and pose heightened risks for groups exposed to intersectional discrimination. 54. Externalization also raises broader ethical and rule-of-law concerns. Differences in bargaining power between the States involved may enable the use of pressure in the conclusion of such arrangements. The increasing use of development funding to support migration cooperation may be at variance with the objective of promoting sustainable development and may prove counterproductive in the longer term. Similar effects may result from restrictions on regional free-movement regimes essential to sustaining livelihoods. Civil society actors who support migrants subject to externalization measures may also face reprisals, particularly where migration cooperation is framed in political or security terms. At the same time, the persistent lack of transparency, including reliance on informal, opaque arrangements, risks undermining democratic oversight and eroding the rule of law.131 55. The Special Rapporteur recalls that States remain bound by their obligations under international human rights law when designing, financing and implementing migration cooperation, including where measures are carried out extraterritorially or through third States. States cannot avoid responsibility by contracting out their obligations to other States, international organizations or private entities. Rather than seeking to outsource responsibilities through arrangements that create human rights risks and reputational and financial costs, States should prioritize rights-based, fair and sustainable asylum and migration systems that fully respect human rights and related procedural safeguards. This includes moving away from broad reliance on “safe country” concepts, ensuring access to international protection in line with international human rights and refugee law, and creating genuine responsibility-sharing mechanisms. As removal is not the only measure to address the situation of persons in an irregular situation, greater emphasis should be placed on developing and implementing rights-based and sustainable alternatives, such as safe and regular pathways for admission and stay, including regularization.132 In doing so, States should recognize migrants’ sociocultural, civic-political and economic contributions to society.133 56. While the recommendations set out in the previous report remain valid,134 the Special Rapporteur seeks to further clarify and expand upon them. In order to uphold their human rights obligations in the context of migration cooperation, States should: (a) Ensure that migration cooperation fully respects the international human rights obligations of all States involved and that all cooperation instruments include explicit, binding and enforceable human rights and non-discrimination clauses; (b) Respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all migrants and refugees under their jurisdiction, including when exercised extraterritorially, and prevent and stop any activity resulting in a violation of the right to leave any country, of the prohibition of refoulement, collective expulsion, arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, forced labour and enforced disappearance, in racial discrimination, in violation of the right to life, to due process and to an effective remedy, in violation of the right to family life, or of economic and social rights, or in violation of the rights to privacy and data protection; (c) Refrain from any measure leading to direct or indirect violations of the principle of non-refoulement, ensure that the “safe country” concept is applied only on the basis of an individual and thorough assessment of safety and a meaningful 131 132 133 134 18 Submissions from Brot für die Welt; EuroMed Rights and others; and European Council on Refugees and Exiles. OHCHR, Leveraging regular migration pathways for human rights, 2025. See A/HRC/56/54. A/80/302, para. 63. GE.26-06322