Healing or fleeing?: Reflecting on international protection and health challenges from three refugee pathways

The situation of contemporary refugees can be reflected as paradigmatic of the international efforts and challenges to provide universal access to human rights, namely the right to health. Yet, refugees’ experiences might denote meanings of health services that do not correspond to places where health care is provided. After acknowledging the protection principles of international asylum systems, three critical events are considered, as narrated by refugees while reflecting on their pathways from Ethiopia to Italy, passing through Libya, both before and after the completion of the asylum request procedure. These events, contextualized in health services’ settings, allow us to reflect on: health services as safer spaces and least regulated than detention facilities, and health care as a relatively important issue in contexts where freedom and survival are threatened; and health services as spaces of restricted healthcare and assistance in situations of limited freedom, such as in the EU refugee context of limited rights of mobility. This paper follows a human/health ecology approach, proposing a critical and intersected reading of protection and health issues, and suggests that efforts to recognize refugees’ right to health demands changes in the overall asylum system.