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Forget the ‘war on smuggling’, we need to be helping refugees in need
The crisis in the Mediterranean, which has led to more than
1,700 deaths already this year, has evoked an immediate response from European
political leaders. Yet the EU response fundamentally and wilfully misunderstands
the underlying causes. It has focused increasingly on tackling smuggling
networks, reinforcing border control and deportation. Somehow European
politicians have managed to turn a human tragedy into an opportunity to further
reinforce migration control policies, rather than engage in meaningful
international cooperation to address the real causes of the problem.
The deaths in the Mediterranean have two main causes.
First, the abolition in November 2014 of the successful Mare Nostrum
search-and-rescue programme, which saved more than 100,000 lives last year,
immediately led to a reduction in the number of rescues and an increase in the
number of deaths.
Second, and most importantly, there is a global
displacement crisis. We know that in last week’s tragedy – as with wider data on
this year’s Mediterranean crossings – a growing proportion are coming from
refugee-producing countries such as Syria, Eritrea and Somalia. These people are
fleeing conflict and persecution. Of course, others are coming from relatively
stable countries such as Senegal and Mali, but the majority now are almost
certainly refugees.
Around the world there are currently more displaced people
than at any time since the second world war. More than 50 million people are
refugees or internally displaced, and the current international refugee regime
is being stretched to its absolute limits. For example, there are nine million
displaced Syrians, of whom three million are refugees.
The overwhelming majority are in neighbouring countries
such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. A quarter of Lebanon’s entire population is
now made up of Syrian refugees. Yet the capacity of these states is limited.
Faced with this influx, Jordan and Lebanon have closed their borders to new
arrivals. But these people have to go somewhere to seek protection and, with few
alternatives, increasing numbers are making the perilous journey across the
Mediterranean to Europe.
In this context, there are no easy solutions. Yet European
politicians are taking the easy option of failing to understand the wider world
of which Europe is a part. From early last week, Italy’s prime minister, Matteo
Renzi, focused on proclaiming a “war on trafficking”. Politicians across Europe
followed suit. Yet this fails to recognise that smuggling does not cause
migration; it responds to an underlying demand. Criminalising the smugglers
serves as a convenient scapegoat, but it cannot solve the problem. Rather like a
“war on drugs”, it will simply displace the problem, increase prices, introduce
ever less scrupulous market entrants and make the journey more perilous.
The proposals to emerge from last week’s emergency EU
meetings in Luxembourg and Brussels have been similarly disappointing. They have
focused on destroying the vessels of smugglers and committing to higher levels
of rapid deportation, presumably to unstable and unsafe transit countries such
as Libya. The humanitarian provisions of the plans have been vague and
problematic. The EU has committed to triple funding for Operation Triton. Yet
unlike the abolished Mare Nostrum, that operation has never had a
search-and-rescue focus. As the head of the EU border agency, Frontex, has
explained, it is primarily a border security operation with little capacity to
save lives.
The problem is far broader than a border control issue; it
goes to the heart of the way in which we collectively protect and assist
refugees and displaced populations. The global refugee regime, based on the 1951
Convention on the Status of Refugees, creates an obligation on states to protect
and assist refugees who reach their territory, yet around the world its core
principles are under threat. This is not only the case in Europe. Australia’s
Pacific Solution, which prevents “boat people” arriving, is an abdication of
legal responsibility. In the aftermath of the Garissa attacks, Kenya recently
announced a proposal to close the Dadaab camps, home to hundreds of thousands of
Somali refugees. In both the global north and south, the right of refugees to
seek asylum is being eroded.
Yet the rights of refugees to seek asylum have to be
sacrosanct. We collectively created the global refugee regime in the aftermath
of the second world war because Europe recognised the absolute obligation to
ensure that people facing persecution would have access to effective protection
on the territory of another state. As it did in the early 1950s, courageous
European leadership is again needed to repair that international system and
reinforce fundamental human rights standards, within and beyond the EU.
There is a fundamental inequality in the existing global
refugee regime. It creates an obligation on states to protect those refugees who
arrive on the territory of a state (“asylum”), but it provides few clear
obligations to support refugees who are on the territory of other states
(“burden-sharing”). This means that inevitably states closest to
refugee-producing countries take on a disproportionate responsibility for
refugees. This inequality is a problem within Europe, but it also exists on a
global scale. It is the reason why more than 80% of the world’s refugees are
hosted by developing countries.
In order to enable this system to function – and sustain
the willingness of countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Kenya to host refugees – a
serious ongoing commitment to refugee protection needs to be maintained by
countries outside regions of origin. This is even more important when “we”
arguably have a moral responsibility – through our foreign policies – for the
destabilisation of countries such as Syria and Libya.
One way of protecting refugees and engaging in
international cooperation is through resettlement. Many countries, such as the
US, Canada and Australia, have a history of resettling refugees directly from
camps and urban areas. Europe does not generally have that tradition; in
response to the Syrian crisis, resettlement numbers have been comparatively
tiny. The proposal for a “voluntary” European resettlement scheme for 5,000
refugees to emerge at last week’s Brussels meeting is absurd against the
backdrop of three million Syrian refugees.
There are instructive lessons from history on the kinds of
international cooperation that could reinforce the refugee regime and make a
difference in the Mediterranean. After the end of the Vietnam war in 1975,
hundreds of thousands of Indochinese “boat people” crossed territorial waters
from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia towards south-east Asian host states such as
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Throughout the
1970s and 1980s, the host states, facing an influx, pushed many of the boats
back into the water and people drowned. Like today, there was a public response
to images of people drowning on television and in newspapers, but addressing the
issue took political leadership and large-scale international cooperation.
In 1989, under UNHCR leadership, a Comprehensive Plan of
Action (CPA) was agreed for Indochinese refugees. It was based on an
international agreement for sharing responsibility. The receiving countries in
south-east Asia agreed to keep their borders open, engage in search-and-rescue
operations and provide reception to the boat people.
However, they did so based on two sets of commitments from
other states. First, a coalition of governments – the US, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the European states – committed to resettle all those who were
judged to be refugees. Second, alternative and humane solutions, including
return and alternative, legal immigration channels were found for those who were
not refugees in need of international protection. The plan led to millions being
resettled and the most immediate humanitarian challenge was addressed.
The Indochinese response was not perfect and it is not a
perfect analogy to the contemporary Mediterranean, but it highlights the need
for a broader framework based on international cooperation and
responsibility-sharing.
The elements of a solution to the contemporary crisis have
to be at a number of different levels. Above all, though, solutions have to come
from a reaffirmation of the need to uphold asylum and refugee protection, and to
see these as a shared global responsibility. If there is to be a silver lining
to the current crisis, it stems from the opportunity for political leadership to
reframe how refugees are seen by the public and to come up with creative
solutions for refugees on a global scale. But that will take political courage
and leadership.