WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration plans to call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum at the United Nations later this month, documents show, as it seeks to undo the post-World War Two framework around humanitarian protection.
State Department officials sketched out plans for an event later this month on the sidelines of the U.N.'s annual general assembly meeting that would call for reframing the global approach to asylum and immigration to reflect Trump's restrictive stance, according to two internal planning documents reviewed by Reuters and a State Department spokesperson.
Under the proposed framework, asylum seekers would be required to claim protection in the first country they enter, not a nation of their choosing, the spokesperson said. Asylum would be temporary and the host country would decide whether conditions in their home country had improved enough to return, a major shift from how asylum works in the U.S. and elsewhere.
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Trump's administration has already rewritten the U.S. approach to immigration, prioritizing white South Africans for entry and forcefully detaining those in the country illegally. With the U.N. event, Trump would be taking that restrictive vision global, urging its adoption by the world body that established the international legal framework for the right to seek asylum.
