A/75/590 human rights, including freedom of movement, the right to privacy, the right to bodily autonomy and the right to equality and non-discrimination, especially for refugees and migrants. 128 3. Border externalization 43. Border externalization – the extraterritorialization of national and regional borders to other geographic regions in order to prevent migrant and refugee arrivals – has become a standard border enforcement tool for many countries and regions. The human rights violations associated with border externalizatio n are well documented. 129 Border externalization does not affect all nationality or national origin groups equally. It has a disproportionate impact on persons from Africa, Central and South America and South Asia, and in many regions is fuelled by racializ ed, xenophobic, ethnonationalist politics that seek to exclude certain national and ethnic groups from regions on discriminatory bases. States and regional blocs have increasingly relied on digital technologies to achieve this border externalization, thereby consolidating and expanding discriminatory, exclusionary regimes. 44. One submission highlighted the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) as a programme that uses big data technologies to predict, control and monitor traffic across European Union borders. 130 It deploys surveillance drones in the Mediterranean Sea, in order to notify the Libyan coastguard to intercept refugee and migrant boats and return migrants to Libya. 131 Although the European Commission insists that the drones are only for civil surveillance purposes, 132 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has spoken out against coordinated pushbacks and failures to assist migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, making it one of the deadliest migration rout es in the world. 133 Surveillance technologies are essential for coordination in this context. 45. Another submission reported the participation of 13 European nations in the ROBORDER project, a “fully functional, autonomous border surveillance system”. 134 ROBORDER consists of unpiloted mobile robots capable of functioning on a stand-alone basis or in swarms, in a range of environments – aerial, water surface, underwater, and ground. 135 This proposed increased use of drones to police Europe’s borders exacerbates the decentralization of the border zone into various vertical and horizontal layers of surveillance, suspending State power from the skies, and extends the border visually and virtually, turning people into security objects and data points to be analysed, stored, collected and rendered intelligible. 136 The usage of military, or quasi-military, autonomous technology also bolsters the connection between immigration, national security, and the increasing push towards the criminalization of __________________ 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 20-14872 Ibid. See, for example, A/HRC/23/46, A/HRC/29/36 and A/72/335. Submission by Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights, citing Btihaj Ajana, “Augmented borders: big data and the ethics of immigration control”, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, vol. 13, issue 1 (2015). Submission by Franciscans International, citing www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190819-euusing-israel-drones-to-track-migrant-boats-in-the-med/. Submission by Franciscans International, citing www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-92019-003257-ASW_EN.pdf. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25875&LangID=E . Submission by Homo Digitalis. See also https://roborder.eu/. The participating States are Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ibid. Raluca Csernatoni, “Constructing the EU’s high-tech borders: Frontex and dual-use drones for border management”. 19/25