A REGIONAL TOOLKIT FOR PRACTITIONERS 1 17 that assumes that only a real prospect of removal can be successful, and thus detention is permissible only under this prospect. Said prospect “does not exist where it appears unlikely that the person concerned will be admitted to a third country, having regard to those periods.”48 Other resources According to the International Detention Coalition in its Handbook for preventing unnecessary immigration detention, since detention interferes with the right to liberty, it must “meet those standards that have been established in international law including, inter alia, that it is lawfully applied; that it is reasonable and necessary in the individual case; that it is proportionate to the reasons for the detention; and that it is applied without discrimination.” Furthermore, detention should be necessary and in proportion to the “objectives of identity and security checks; prevention of absconding; or compliance with an expulsion order.”49 The Coalition makes it clear that human rights law standards require for immigration detention to be used “only as a last resort in exceptional cases after all other options have been shown to be inadequate in the individual case”50 and should be avoided for vulnerable groups such as women, children, stateless persons, among others. The International Commission of Jurists, in its Practitioner’s Guide, stated that detention must always be prescribed by law in an adequate manner, reflecting the human rights principle of legal certainty, in which individuals “should be able to foresee, to the greatest extent possible, the consequences which the law may have for them.”51 If removal would breach the principle of non-refoulement, detention pending deportation is no longer justified. Furthermore, the aforementioned principles also apply when “other legal or practical obstacles impede the deportation, such as the fact that the concerned person is stateless and there is no other State willing to accept him or her.”52 Finally, “the detention of stateless persons can never be justified when there is “no active or realistic progress towards transfer to another State”53 ERT Guideline 24 requires that detention should not be arbitrary, and ERT Guideline 25 outlines the requirements for detention not to be deemed arbitrary, namely: being provided for by national law, being carried out with a legitimate aim, being non-discriminatory, being necessary, being proportionate and reasonable and finally being carried out in accordance with the procedural and substantive safeguards of international law. ERT Guideline 16 states that mandatory immigration detention is always arbitrary and unlawful. Guideline 27 contains an in-exhaustive list of situations that would not constitute legitimate objectives for immigration detention, including: as a deterrent of irregular migration, as punishment for irregular migration, as a punishment for migrants who do not cooperate with their removal proceedings, for the purpose of status determination, to protect public safety or national security, and for the purpose of administrative expediency. Finally, ERT Guideline 30 outlines the considerations which should be taken into account when determining whether detention “is non-discriminatory, necessary, proportionate and reasonable”54, namely: decisions to detain must be individually assessed, a person should not be detained solely on the basis of their statelessness, the required detention period (length of time) should be taken into consideration when making the assessment as should stateless persons’ vulnerability to prolonged detention, applications for protection should be assessed before decisions to detain, and finally a stateless persons’ inability to cooperate with removal should not be conflated with non-cooperation. The Global Detention Project’s paper on Immigration Detention and Proportionality states that Immigration detention is an extraordinarily diverse phenomenon whose close association to criminal incarceration raises a number of questions about whether or to what degree this form of detention adheres to the limited requirements of immigration policy. While a number of national and international entities have highlighted this problem, to date little effort has been made to propose a methodology for systematically assessing the degree to which detention regimes meet the standards of proportionality. 55 2.3 PROCEDURAL GUARANTEES Stateless persons held in detention have the right to various procedural guarantees, which include: detention being ordered by a judicial authority; the detention order including grounds for detention being given to the individual in writing and in a language and terms which he/she can understand; the individual being informed of his/her rights regarding the detention order, including their right to legal counsel, to apply for bail, to seek judicial review and appeal the legality of the detention; and the individual being informed of the maximum amount of time he/she can be held in detention. The failure to comply with such procedural standards undermines the legality of the detention. Stateless persons are at particular risk of being detained for a prolonged period of time, and therefore the strict adherence to procedural standards is of paramount importance to them. It is also a good practice for detaining authorities to provide detainees with information – in a language the detainee can understand – with all his/her rights and entitlements, contact details of organisations which can assist them, and other bodies who can assist them in challenging the legality of their detention and the conditions of their detention. It would be good practice for such information to include guidance on how a detainee may access a dedicated statelessness determination procedure and/or any other support available that could assist with enquiries regarding ascertaining an entitlement to a nationality.