For EU countries that have long wrestled with the difficulty of deporting migrants, a digital tool created by the UN’s migration agency, IOM, has promised much. But critics fear it is accelerating flawed deportation processes that are prone to rights abuses and short on safeguards.
An investigation by The New Humanitarian suggests the Readmission Case Management System, or RCMS, may have been used to deport migrants who had legal permission to stay in the EU, as well as asylum seekers who only agreed to be sent home to avoid detention.
While these cases represent a small fraction of the voluntary and forced removals processed via RCMS, they highlight the potential for the tool to facilitate rights violations, including deportations to countries where asylum seekers are likely to face persecution, which would contravene a key principle of international human rights law known as non-refoulement.
“The main problem is that the potential for human rights issues pertaining to refoulement and personal data are high, and IOM deploys the system without safeguards in place,” a former IOM staff member told The New Humanitarian, requesting anonymity to avoid professional reprisals.
“Once the system is deployed, it becomes a purely state-to-state tool,” they said. “IOM at no point can ensure who, on what conditions, and with what safeguards, gets deported.”
Starting in 2017, IOM oversaw the development of separate RCMS platforms for Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The tool comes into play after a migrant has been ordered to leave the EU. Border authorities in these countries can use RCMS to correspond in real time with their European counterparts, exchange migrants’ personal and biometric data, set up interviews, and issue travel documents.
One of the tech firms IOM hired to develop RCMS has described it as “a collaborative and transparent platform to re-admit deportees” to their origin countries. An IOM brochure for the newest version of the tool says it “significantly reduces delays in manual case processing”.
Beyond the three countries chosen by the EU and IOM to use RCMS, dozens of additional countries have gained access to the tool without the agency’s involvement or oversight, facilitating countless deportations by countries with varying human rights records.
To maintain RCMS in Bangladesh, IOM hired a tech firm that had previously built similar products for the country’s Rapid Action Battalion, a US-sanctioned elite police unit alleged to be a death squad.
IOM’s role in developing RCMS builds on a growing trend of humanitarian actors adopting technologies that states might use for non-humanitarian purposes. It also coincides with the agency’s involvement in other border enforcement activities, such as managing an American migrant detention facility in Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay, and signing on to help the US remove migrants amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown.
Giulio Coppi, senior humanitarian officer at the digital rights advocacy group Access Now, said RCMS exemplifies IOM’s drift away from humanitarian principles “to function more as an on-demand migration control support role for governments”.
The former IOM staff member said RCMS makes the agency “a tool of the EU externalisation policy”, in which wealthy countries outsource migration control responsibilities to other countries or organisations. They added that RCMS might exacerbate abuses by “increasing the capacity of states to handle much larger caseloads” of deportees.
Asked about potential benefits for migrants or asylum seekers from the use of RCMS, the former IOM staff member said these were “hard to find”. While IOM has claimed it can shorten detention times, evidence from governments on this has not been shared, they added. RCMS is not linked to asylum databases, so the merit of international protection claims is outside its remit.
In response to questions about RCMS, an IOM spokesperson told The New Humanitarian that the agency does not assess states’ decisions about migrant removals, conduct forced returns, manage or operate the systems it provides to governments, or access personal data processed through those systems.
“IOM’s role is limited to capacity development, policy, legal, and operational support, to ensure that returns are safe, dignified, [and] rights-based in line with international standards,” the spokesperson said.
When asked how IOM ensures that returns are safe, dignified, and rights-based, the spokesperson said: “States, not IOM, are responsible.”
Mixed results
Every year, EU countries issue removal orders for hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, including migrant workers whose visas have expired and asylum seekers whose requests for international protection have been rejected.
But the vast majority of removal orders – about three quarters in 2024 – are not carried out.
EU states can theoretically remove migrants by force, but this requires cooperation by the receiving countries. Some countries, such as those that rely on remittances from abroad, are reluctant to cooperate. Others find the procedure too cumbersome or costly to readmit large numbers of returnees.
“In most cases, third countries do not formally contest the readmission of their nationals,” said a 2021 report on migrant readmission by the European Court of Auditors. “However, they can obstruct the readmission process and effective returns in various ways, in particular for irregular migrants without valid travel documents.”
How EU countries remove migrants
“If a state won’t readmit its own nationals,” said Chris Jones, executive director of the migrant rights organisation Statewatch, “then you have no deportation.”
Between 2014 and 2020, the European Commission allocated 38.5 million euros to a project aimed at boosting non-EU countries’ cooperation on readmission and preventing irregular migration. The Commission selected IOM to implement the project.
The agency has since spent more than $10 million developing and maintaining various iterations of RCMS, according to calculations by The New Humanitarian based on EU and IOM records.
The European Commission’s directorate for migration, DG HOME, said in 2022 that RCMS had “so far proved successful in improving the effectiveness and transparency of the readmission cooperation and processes”.
But annual readmission data published by the Commission covering 2021 to 2023 supports a different conclusion. In the three countries where standalone RCMS platforms were developed under IOM programmes, readmission rates have remained below their pre-RCMS averages.
“Ultimately, the RCMS is a technical tool whose success also depends on how willing third-country authorities are to cooperate,” said the European Court of Auditors report.
The IOM spokesperson said the purpose of RCMS is not to raise return rates, but to streamline cooperation between states. They added, citing the European Court of Auditors report, that return rates alone cannot be used to evaluate cooperation on readmission.
While return rates may not be the sole indicator of readmission cooperation, they are consistently listed as the first among several indicators in annual reports published by the European Commission.
IOM is now working on expanding states’ adoption of RCMS. In 2023, the Swedish tech firm Nordicstation received more than $1.8 million from IOM to build a global version known as the e-RCMS, meant to be configurable for any country.
The e-RCMS is now under development in Azerbaijan, Türkiye, and the Western Balkans. The EU and IOM have also explored the possibility of deploying it in Côte d’Ivoire and The Gambia.
DG HOME did not respond to questions from The New Humanitarian about RCMS in time for publication.
Questionable cases
IOM’s internal policy forbids it from carrying out deportations.
But the agency is allowed to provide “non-movement services” related to deportations, “as long as they are provided with the informed consent of the migrant and contribute to protecting their rights and well-being”. The policy also allows IOM to provide technical support to governments carrying out deportations, as long as they comply with international law.
According to the IOM staff member, the agency cannot ensure that countries using RCMS are meeting these requirements. “IOM does not know much, since it cannot access the system data or monitor the returns,” they said.
In 2024, EU countries deported more than 3,000 migrants to Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, according to calculations by The New Humanitarian based on data published by Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistical office. Countless more have been deported by non-EU countries linked to those countries’ RCMS platforms. It is not possible to assess each operation’s compliance with international law.
However, in the course of other migration-related reporting, The New Humanitarian has identified several cases where RCMS was used in removals that appear to have involved mistreatment.
“Effectively, the IOM-developed system is being used by countries with much more dubious human rights records than EU member states and has become a tool for deportations globally.”
In 2023, multiple EU member states, working with the bloc’s border enforcement agency Frontex, deported 64 Bangladeshi migrants and asylum seekers, some of whom had been detained in a camp in Greece for months. Before being transferred from the camp to the airport, the deportees’ phones were confiscated, preventing them from contacting lawyers, who in some cases were in the process of securing their clients’ release or legal residency in the EU.
Several deportees said they had received permission to stay in the EU while in detention. The migration-focused media outlet InfoMigrants confirmed this in at least one case. Greek officials told the outlet that RCMS was used to process readmission for some members of this group, though it is unclear whether it was used specifically for those who said their legal residency was violated.
Neither the Bangladeshi embassy in Greece nor the Greek migration ministry responded to questions about the use of RCMS in the 2023 deportations.
The IOM spokesperson said the agency aims to “prevent or mitigate potential risks linked to its products/services and their use by non-UN security sector partners” by assessing human rights risks and “balancing positive outcomes against foreseeable potential harms”.
“Once control is handed over to government partners, ending IOM’s operational role and oversight, IOM continues to advocate for translating government commitments into actions that improve governance and support services for migrants,” they said.
Bangladesh is one of seven countries the EU considers safe enough to fast-track asylum claims starting in 2026. When asked about concerns that this could raise the likelihood of RCMS being used to remove people whose asylum claims have not been properly processed, the spokesperson said: “IOM is fully confident in the EU’s commitment to asylum and refugee law.”
After RCMS was developed under IOM programmes in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, both countries allowed non-EU countries to connect, without the agency’s involvement. Türkiye has received access to Pakistan’s version, and more than 30 countries – including the United Arab Emirates and the UK – have connected to Sri Lanka’s version.
“Effectively, the IOM-developed system is being used by countries with much more dubious human rights records than EU member states and has become a tool for deportations globally,” the former IOM staff member said.
Between 2022 and 2024, the British Indian Ocean Territory arranged return flights for more than 150 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers from the remote, militarised island of Diego Garcia, where many sought to claim asylum. Travel documents seen by The New Humanitarian suggest that RCMS was used to process their readmission to Sri Lanka.
British authorities described these returns as voluntary, but the territory’s court ruled in late 2024 that the conditions on Diego Garcia amounted to unlawful detention. The threat of detention and ill-treatment, according to experts at the UN human rights office, OHCHR, may amount to a form of coercion that precludes consent to repatriation.
When they landed in Sri Lanka, many of the asylum seekers were arrested, one of them told The New Humanitarian. The country criminalises departures from anywhere other than an approved port. Some were jailed for several days and threatened with further detention and fines if they failed to attend trials.
“The Sri Lankan police often come to my house and harass us to go to the police station and court,” the returned asylum seeker said, requesting anonymity due to fear of reprisals by Sri Lankan authorities. “We left our country because our lives were in danger, and now that we’ve come back here, the problem has worsened.”
Asked about the decision to include Sri Lanka in the RCMS programme, the IOM spokesperson said: “States retain the sovereign right to manage migration. Our involvement included supporting cooperation and dialogue between the EU and Sri Lanka. Capacity building and the development of the RCMS in Sri Lanka were part of a broader EU cooperation framework.”
IOM’s decision to collaborate with the Bangladeshi tech firm ISTL raises further concerns.
The agency hired ISTL in 2019 to build a local version of RCMS, along with an automated fingerprint identification system.
In 2021, ISTL began work on two fingerprint systems for Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, a law enforcement unit accused of torture, extrajudicial killings, and forced disappearances. Later that year, the US placed the battalion, along with several affiliated officials, on its Specially Designated Nationals sanctions list, prohibiting US nationals from dealing with it.
In 2023, IOM paid ISTL more than $480,000 for services, including improvements to RCMS and upgrades to the fingerprint identification system.
“IOM should not be working with ISTL, a company that has collaborated with or profited from assisting the Rapid Action Battalion, a paramilitary force in Bangladesh referred to as a death squad and accused of committing torture and extrajudicial killings,” Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia-Pacific policy director at Access Now, told The New Humanitarian.
“The RAB has reportedly been committing human rights violations since at least 2009,” he said. “IOM’s association with the company disregards these human rights violations.”
The IOM spokesperson said: “IOM in Bangladesh has worked with several vendors, including ISTL, until February 2025, when the formal agreement with ISTL ended. Our resources are not used for any engagement with the RAB.”
ISTL did not respond to The New Humanitarian’s request for comment on its relationships with IOM and the RAB.
A service organisation
While often critical of states’ migration control practices, including over-reliance on digital tools, IOM is also dependent on funding from wealthy countries that seek its help with border enforcement.
In 2019, amid a previous EU push to raise return rates, The New Humanitarian reported on rights campaigners’ concerns about MIDAS, another digital tool developed by IOM and used by dozens of countries, mostly in Africa, to collect migrants’ biometric data.
IOM was accused that same year of facilitating the removal of tens of thousands of migrants from Libya between 2017 and 2019. The agency said the returns were voluntary, but, according to Human Rights Watch, the “prospect of indefinite abusive detention” made voluntariness impossible.
This year, amid mass deportations from the United States, IOM came under criticism for helping deportees return to their countries of origin. Human Rights Watch again pointed out that confinement called the voluntariness of these returns into question.
Guy Goodwin-Gill, an international law professor at Oxford University who has researched IOM, said RCMS further highlights the disparity between the agency’s public image as a migrant protection organisation and its true role, as described in a 2011 Canadian government report: “IOM is primarily a service organisation that responds to requests for specific services.”
“It’s not a humanitarian organisation,” Goodwin-Gill told The New Humanitarian. “They provide services to states who pay.”
IOM’s project-based funding model, he added, makes the agency especially reliant on requests for non-humanitarian services. “They’ll basically do anything for money, in my view,” Goodwin-Gill said.
Like many UN entities and international NGOs, IOM is grappling with the effects of the Trump administration’s slashing of US foreign aid funding. The US previously accounted for around 40% of IOM’s funding, and agency boss Amy Pope has projected a budget decrease from $4 billion to $2.89 billion in 2026.
In February, IOM announced an increase in assistance to migrants choosing to return to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean – areas targeted by Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
The IOM spokesperson said it was inaccurate and misleading to suggest that US aid funding cuts could exacerbate the agency’s dependence on funding for border enforcement projects that could contribute to harming migrants.
“Immigration and border governance have long formed a core part of the organisation’s work, which engages with governments and remains fully consistent with a rights-based approach,” the spokesperson said. “These activities have not traditionally been funded by the US, and are not considered as humanitarian work by IOM, whose mandate spans a broader spectrum of interventions than humanitarian assistance alone.”
Rather than filling the gap left by US aid cuts, European countries are redirecting foreign aid funds towards defense and border management, including readmission cooperation, according to a recent analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
In March, the European Commission proposed a new “Common European System for Returns”, which calls for expanded authority to detain migrants and carry out deportations.
“Another proposal is expected later this year about the digitalisation of case management for deportation, which, it is fair to assume, will draw on the expertise IOM has already developed over the years,” said Caterina Rodelli, EU policy analyst at Access Now.
She added: “IOM’s work in developing the RCMS and enforcing deportations through use of digital technologies has played a significant role in normalising the punitive approach in migration policies, especially in the EU.”
With research support by Marc Duby. Edited by Andrew Gully.
With support from Tactical Tech.
