The international asylum system is widely acknowledged to be broken. But as public discussion obsesses over overwhelmed borders, deadly journeys, and administrative chaos, a first-principles analysis points to a far more disturbing reality beneath the surface.
Namely: millions among the world’s most vulnerable people are systematically excluded from asylum protection because of an outdated legal definition.
The 1951 Geneva Convention, the main body of international legislation on the topic, defines refugees as individuals who have left their country of nationality and cannot return due to a well-founded fear of persecution. Hidden behind these words is a consequential reality: to seek asylum, one must necessarily show up on another country’s territory.
In effect, this implies that, of all the people who are physically in danger due to persecution, the international community is only available to protect those who migrate. By requiring that people cross some border to seek asylum – a requirement we will, for simplicity, call "territorial trigger" – the Convention de facto outsources the selection process to physical endurance and human traffickers.
Since the only way to trigger legal protection is to undertake dangerous and expensive journeys, the system filters out the elderly, the sick, and the poor. Those who make it out of their country are the survivors, typically among the youngest and healthiest, as the self-selection effects in Venezuelan and Ukrainian diasporas suggest.
Border limits create systemic failures
It is impossible to calculate exactly how many people would qualify for asylum if they could file a claim without crossing a border. But for a good proxy consider the following.
In 2024, there were about 37 million refugees worldwide and almost twice as many people displaced in their own country (IDPs) due to conflict or violence. By definition, IDPs cannot apply for asylum as they are "only" displaced internally. However, that does not mean they do not face persecution.
For example, last year South Sudan had roughly 2 million displaced people mostly due to intra-country violence. Yet, only 400,000 South Sudanese individuals fled and applied for asylum. The situation in Afghanistan is even more dire, with as many as 4 million IDPs and just 100,000 Afghans who sought asylum abroad.
In countries with well-documented persecution patterns like South Sudan and Afghanistan, it is statistically certain that many of the IDPs that remained would have qualified for asylum if they had made it out. In short, the increasing gap between IDPs worldwide and refugees reveals that the Convention is failing exactly where it would be most needed.
When survival determines who is protected
Consider the story of Alex Kajoba. Alex fled his village in South Sudan from South Sudanese army units, and was racing toward the border, desperately trying to reach safety before soldiers closed in. Just as he was on the final stretch of his escape, armed men caught him on the road and executed him on the spot, destroying his chance to ever reach asylum.
We recognise that the territorial trigger cannot be abolished entirely. There will always be those who have no choice but to rush out of their country. However, relying on it as the sole mechanism for protection is a policy failure.
An obvious, if somewhat radical, solution exists. The letter of the Convention should be amended to allow asylum applications to be filed from countries of origin or nearby transit hubs. Today’s technology certainly permits a "digital trigger", which could be administered via a secure digital UNHCR portal.
With a digital trigger, asylum-seekers would undergo a remote pre-screening and, if found eligible, would be given the green light to reach the closest refugee camp, ideally supported by humanitarian corridors and regulatory approvals. Such a remote triage system would not only ease the screening burden at refugee camps, but also offer much greater legal and political certainty to asylum-seekers than the current alternative, blindly undertaking life-threatening journeys.
While the idea of a digital trigger might be dismissed as impractical, the digitalisation of asylum services is already happening. For example, Egypt and Indonesia recently introduced a Digital Gateway to alleviate pressure on in-person appointment channels. Several Latin American countries rolled out an online portal where individuals intending to seek asylum in the US can pre-register and complete a self-onboarding questionnaire.
A pilot program in Mexico allowed US-based physicians to conduct telepsychiatry visits on asylum-seekers waiting to be transferred. While these initiatives stop short of a full-scale online refugee application, they are a promising sign that digitalising the asylum system is possible.
Building a system that can be trusted
A digital trigger would still present challenges. First, the system would have to be ready to handle a spike in applications. UNHCR should be equipped with a robust digital infrastructure and well-trained staff to not only process applications quickly, but also filter the asylum-worthy ones from the rest – admittedly, a hard task per se.
In addition, a digital trigger would require potent authentication mechanisms to prevent identity-related abuses while remaining accessible and user-friendly.
And not least, the necessary humanitarian – and possibly military – architecture should be devised to ensure that an individual who receives a digital approval can safely reach the nearest refugee hub, which of course is particularly challenging if persecution stems from that individual’s own government.
These concerns are all valid. However, the current alternative is an obsolete system that unintentionally leaves millions behind. With the right guardrails in place, a digital trigger can be the logical 21st century complement to the 1950s territorial trigger, providing access to the international asylum system based on need, independent of one’s physical strength or financial resources.
