On 19 May 2025, Lithuania instituted proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Belarus, for “alleged smuggling of migrants”. According to Vilnius, Alexander Lukashenko’s regime violated its obligations under the Protocol against the smuggling of migrants by facilitating, supporting and enabling them to cross into the neighbouring country.
The international protection system is based on the principle of non-refoulement, access to asylum procedures, and the individual examination of each claim. These safeguards protect individuals from arbitrary return and require states to follow established legal procedures.
According to Lithuania, Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime exploited the predictability of these procedures as a tool of political pressure. “In 2021, 4,115 irregular migrants entered Lithuania through the border with Belarus; most were from Iraq, with others coming mainly from Congo, Cameroon, Syria and Iran,” said its Ministry of the Interior. By organising the movement of third-country nationals towards the border, as stated by the European Commission in November 2021, the regime used them to trigger Lithuania’s legal, administrative and humanitarian mechanisms, turning its legal infrastructure into a target of political pressure.
International legal obligations thus became a mechanism for shifting the costs of a crisis allegedly created by the Belarusian regime onto Vilnius. The ICJ case raises a broader question, of whether international law can hold a state accountable for organised migration pressure against another country without weakening the protection of the people caught up in it.
International Law as an Object of Political Pressure
International law extensively regulates the relationship between a person seeking protection and the state considering their claim. These safeguards were not designed to counter another state that deliberately uses them as an instrument of political pressure. In an ordinary migration crisis, these safeguards protect individuals and help determine who is entitled to protection. When migration is used for political pressure, the same safeguards become part of the pressure exerted on another state.
Processing claims requires the involvement of border and migration authorities, courts, medical services, interpreters and legal assistance. A large influx increases this burden, creates additional costs and diverts state resources from other areas.
The consequences extend to state institutions and domestic politics, intensifying internal disputes. International legal obligations and the state’s legal infrastructure themselves become objects of exploitation.
Belarus response to EU’s sanctions
The crisis began in 2021 against the backdrop of the Lukashenko regime’s conflict with the European Union (EU), sanctions, and a sharp deterioration in relations. According to Lithuania and EU institutions, the regime organised the arrival of third-country nationals in Belarus, facilitated the issuing of visas, increased the number of flights, and created infrastructure to accommodate and transport people towards the EU border.
According to Lithuania’s complaint before the ICJ, Belarusian security services transported migrants to the Lithuanian border, accompanied them and forced them to cross illegally. Lithuanian authorities provided the Belarusian side with videos, photographs and evidence of illegal border crossings and proposed joint investigations into these incidents. Belarusian authorities denied any wrongdoing and did not cooperate with Lithuania in investigating them.
By the end of 2021, Polish authorities claimed that Belarusian services escorted groups of migrants towards the Polish border, directed them to crossing points and provided them with bolt cutters, metal poles and ladders to overcome border barriers. Polish authorities also reported damage to border barriers and the coordination of mass attempts to breach the border by Belarusian services. During the clashes, migrants threw stones and other objects at Polish border guards, police officers and soldiers. Several Polish officers were injured.
Lithuania was required to consider each person individually, take individual decisions and provide an opportunity to appeal them. The more people were directed towards the border, the more resources Lithuania had to devote to complying with its own legal obligations.
When Turkey, Morocco or Russia make use of migration
The Belarusian case is not an exception. Turkey, Morocco and Russia have also used migrant people to exert pressure on democratic states.
In February 2020, Turkey stopped preventing migrants from moving towards the Greek border. Thousands of people headed towards the Greek-Turkish border. The Council of the European Union explicitly described Turkey’s actions as the use of “migratory pressure for political purposes”.
In May 2021, Morocco relaxed its border controls with the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Thousands of people crossed the border within a few days amid a dispute between Morocco and Spain over Western Sahara. The European Parliament linked the crisis to the use of migration as a means of political pressure on Spain. In July 2026, another mass crossing from Morocco into Ceuta took place. According to Spanish authorities, around 72,000 people crossed the border.
In 2023, Finland faced the organised movement of third-country nationals through Russia towards its eastern border. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo explicitly stated that Russia was facilitating the movement of people and directing them towards the Finnish border. Interior Minister Mari Rantanen described the situation as a “Russian hybrid operation threatening Finland’s national security”. In response, the government closed all land border crossing points with Russia.
In each of these cases, migration flows became an instrument of political pressure by an authoritarian regime against a democratic state.
What the ICJ Case Could Mean for International Law
The case brought by Lithuania before the ICJ could give international law a basis for treating organised migration pressure as conduct attributable to a state for which it bears responsibility. If state authorities organise the arrival of people, transport them, bring them to the border and help them cross it for the purpose of exerting political pressure on a neighbouring country, these actions should not be considered separately. They are parts of a single operation.
A judgment by the ICJ could provide other states with a legal tool to respond to similar actions. If one country deliberately organises a migration flow to exert pressure on another, international law should assess those actions as a single operation and establish the responsibility of the state that organised it.
Between Refugee Protection and Protection of State Borders
The right to international protection does not mean a right to cross a state border without restriction. However, unlawful entry does not in itself deprive a person of the right to seek asylum.
The Refugee Convention recognises that a person fleeing persecution may enter a safe country without the required documents. The manner in which a person crosses the border and their right to international protection should therefore be considered separately.
A person fleeing persecution on their own is in a different situation from thousands of people being systematically directed by another state towards a foreign border for the purpose of political pressure. The rights of each individual remain protected, but the state is entitled to consider the mass and organised nature of what is happening.
Destroying border barriers, attacking border guards and resisting lawful orders by the authorities should be assessed separately from the grounds for granting protection. A potential right to asylum does not exempt a person from the obligation to comply with the laws of the state in whose territory they are present.
In 2020, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considered a case of mass attempt to cross the border illegally in Melilla. Around 600 people attempted to enter Spain by crossing the border fences. The Court found that the applicants had deliberately participated in a mass attempt to breach the border instead of using available lawful procedures for entry and seeking international protection. The ECtHR did not find that their immediate return to Morocco violated the prohibition of collective expulsion and linked the absence of an individual procedure for challenging their removal to the applicants’ own conduct.
The right to international protection does not confer an unconditional right to disregard established border-crossing procedures and should not deprive a state of the ability to protect its own territory. This principle is particularly important when a mass border crossing is organised by another state and used as a means of political pressure.
The International Refugee Protection System Needs to Be Reconsidered
The 1951 Refugee Convention was created to protect people from persecution. The rights of each individual must be preserved, but international law must also respond to the actions of a state that organises the mass movement of people and directs them towards another country’s border.
In May 2024, an EU Regulation addressed this problem. It specifically provides for situations in which “a third country or a hostile non-state actor encourages or facilitates the movement of third-country nationals or stateless persons to the external borders or to a Member State, with the aim of destabilising the Union or a Member State” and allows ordinary asylum procedures to be adapted in response to such a crisis.
State-organised migration pressure should allow states to protect their borders, process protection claims more quickly, return people who have no right to remain, and establish the responsibility of the state that organised the pressure. At the same time, the principle of non-refoulement, enshrined in the 1951 Convention, which prohibits returning a person to a territory where their life or freedom would be threatened, must be preserved.
The system created in 1951 needs to be reconsidered in light of the methods of interstate pressure used in the twenty-first century.
Aleh Baradzin, a former Belarusian political prisoner, is the founder of the independent analytical and research initiative International Institute for the Study of Political Repression and Authoritarian Systems (IISPR), and Chair of the Board of the Foundation of Belarusian Political Prisoners in Poland.
