Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis
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Transcript: Q&A Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis John Dalhuisen Europe and Central Asia Director, Amnesty International Professor Elspeth Guild Queen Mary University of London; Partner, Kingsley Napley Sue Le Mesurier Global Migration Advisor, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Chair: Matthew Price Chief Correspondent, Today Programme, BBC Radio 4 22 January 2015 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chairman: Stuart Popham QC Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A Question 1 My question is for all of you but mainly for Mr Dalhuisen. Your very relevant point about Turkey and Morocco, in that the European Union is too often looking to how countries can help the European Union, even countries in crisis – I saw truly horrific signs of that when I was back working in Ukraine last spring, just after Crimea. Some really outrageous approaches. Which is not criticism, of course, of the Ukrainians. Who's listening, both in Brussels and at Warsaw/Frontex and maybe key-member-states level, in addressing that issue? That if you're going to ask those countries to help – and you have to, because it's not going to work without them – what can be done to help them? Because as Edward Lucas has pointed out in respect of the current situation in Ukraine and other countries, you can't just replicate models that have been used from the ex-Yugoslav experience, because we're in an even greater crisis, a much greater crisis than that. I'm not sure international bodies have responded to that. John Dalhuisen I don't think they have. I think this whole issue is hugely under-discussed. I think the vast majority of the paying public isn't even aware of the nature of these kind of cooperation agreements, some of which are disclosed, some of which are not. There's a huge lack of transparency in the agreements that Spain has individually with Morocco, that Bulgaria and Greece have with Turkey, that the EU in turn has with them. There's a huge lack of transparency around EU funding arrangements that go to border control operations and supporting asylum systems and all the rest of it. So a lot, frankly, isn't known. A lot happens behind closed doors. This is a very sombre area of EU diplomacy – which has put its fingers on something interesting and possibly good, or at least on a model of migration control that might conceivably be human rights compliant. I think I would have to fess up to that fact. If you can contribute to there being a buffer zone of international protection, refugee convention-protecting countries, then it would not necessarily be incumbent upon you as a sovereign state to accept those crossing from those countries. You would return them to the nearest country they came from that was capable of meeting their protection needs. So structurally there is something legit in this form of cooperation. To its credit, the bit that the EU then advertises is: we are supporting Turkey and calling on Turkey (and indeed, Morocco) to develop asylum systems and procedures, and we give them expertise and we give them money to do it and fund their reception centres, and they try and do all this. The reality is Turkey still hasn't offered a single person asylum. Not one. It doesn't necessarily return all these people, they're swilling around in a situation of complete destitution in Turkey, as irregular, phantom people. I'm not talking about the Syrians, I'm talking about the Afghans and all the rest. Morocco also has a huge bundle of problems when it comes to people accessing asylum there. So the fiction somehow that by getting these countries to do your border control for you, you are somehow respecting the integrity of an international protection system is, frankly, a little bit grotesque. Dare I say it, the same thing is the case in Ukraine, where you might be aware of the degrees of corruption and abuse that take place within the Ukrainian migration services. It's immense and hugely distasteful. But this is all mostly pushed to the side. These are all countries who are advancing in this direction. The curious hypocrisy of this arrangement is exposed when one considers the nature of the prohibition of Dublin returns to countries like Greece, where the European Court of Human Rights and indeed national courts all say you could not return an asylum seeker who's transited through Greece and arrived in the UK 3 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A to Greece, because Greece is manifestly incapable of meeting the protection needs of that individual, both specifically in terms of access to asylum but also more broadly in terms of their access to a range of social and economic rights and integration and all the rest of it. So that wouldn't be okay. But it would be okay for countries that are even worse than Greece, quite frankly, to pull someone back from entering the EU in the first place, literally 200 metres (sometimes even 5 metres) away from a fence that they're trying to cross. This is quite blatantly problematic and hypocritical. Question 2 You've outlined the construction of Fortress Europe and the general mistreatment of migrants and refugees. Do you think this represents a violation of the 1951 Geneva Convention, if not legalistically speaking at least in spirit? What can be done, if anything, at an institutional level to bring EU member states to account in this matter? Also, if not, is the convention somewhat defunct? Sue Le Mesurier I think it's a difficult one, because these people are not necessarily always applying for asylum and they don't necessarily want to, when they arrive in a country, immediately go down where the 1951 convention would take them. That's because they [indiscernible] upon the Dublin Agreement. When they arrive in whatever country it is in Europe, under the Dublin Agreement they are fingerprinted and that's basically where they have to stay. Many people don't want to stay in Cyprus or they don't want to stay in Malta (don't know why). I don't know why they wouldn't stay in Greece. Matthew Price Many of them, in my experience, actually actively avoid getting fingerprinted. In fact, I spoke to lots of Syrians in Italy who were being given the choice: would you like to be fingerprinted? No, thank you very much, we're heading north. The Italians would gently let them go. Sue Le Mesurier I don't think it's a failure of the convention per se. It's a failure of the system. We've got a situation today where the government has pulled out of the reception centre in Cyprus and said to these 300 people: you're on your own now. They said: if you guys apply for asylum, we will be forced to provide assistance under the 1951 convention. But these people don't want to apply for asylum. So the government is washing its hands of them and saying, right, you're on your own. Well, what do we do? As a humanitarian organization, we come and try to provide some support there. UNHCR and others will do the same. So I think you have to look at it in a more balanced way. I think we don't need to change the convention; we don't want to change the convention. The convention is a solid organism, legislation, convention. We 4 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A have it there, it's worked for a number of years. There's a number of other problems around that, I would argue. Elspeth Guild Access to the territory has always been the Achilles heel of the refugee convention. It doesn't provide a right of access to the territory. What we're seeing is the attempt to block access to the territory and displace people elsewhere. So yes, the convention is tremendously important. It sets out the legal and also the ethical requirements. But no, we haven't resolved the problem about access to the territory and resettlement – to argue resettlement is to argue such incredibly small numbers in Europe, less than 5,000, that it's not even worth talking about. Matthew Price Just picking up on one of your points, one of the things that most struck me in talking to a lot of the people arriving in Europe is: they're arriving, they've made these hideous journeys, and then the next thing they do is jump on the first train or whatever – they're on the mobile phone to their relatives in France, in the UK, in wherever, and they're heading off as quickly as they can to get to the place they want to get to.