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
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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. Arriving on the southern shores on Europe is not the main aim. The main aim is to get somewhere specific.
Question 3
My question goes to all the experts. Thank you for inspiring this interesting discussion. Could you please clarify one moment: when you continuously say 'we' – we should, we must, we don't do – who do you imply by 'we'? Is there any kind of world consensus on this subject, or a political or non-political body which every country or government accepts as the main authority on the subject of migration? Thank you.
Matthew Price
It's a great question, actually. Who is 'we'? I suspect, if you talk to quite a number of people in the UK, caught up in this whole argument over immigration here, they will say: absolutely, we should help people who need help, but I don't want them living next door. So who is 'we'?
Elspeth Guild
For the starting point of this evening's debate, 'we' has been Europe. Then of course you have the comeback: are we the Council of Europe or are we the European Union? I think we've really addressed ourselves more around the European Union. Why? Because of course the European Union has adopted all sorts of measures. So in so far as you're looking for some kind of international body which takes 5 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A
responsibility for issues around immigration, then the European Union is par excellence in this part of the world. Goes out there and adopts directives and measures, and therefore it's easy to attack them because there are things going on. The Council of Europe – much less powerful. In human rights, they adopt a whole series of measures. But there isn't the will within the 47 countries of the Council of Europe to adopt measures in the field of immigration. Even in asylum, their voices are heard; the Parliamentary Assembly makes a number of comments about rescue at sea, they've done a terrific report – but it's much more muted.
When you get to the UN level – well, what have we done on migration? Very little. A convention which no European state has been interested in ratifying except two Council of Europe states (Montenegro and Serbia), the convention on migrant workers. Tremendous interest in the Palermo protocols against smuggling and trafficking, the criminalization of those involved in assisting migration in ways outside of the traditional transport industry. So an interest in coercion, in respect of migration.
Perhaps the most interesting development was in 2011. The ILO adopted the – opened for signature the convention on the protection of migrant domestic workers. So perhaps a move towards recognizing particularly vulnerable groups and then seeking to address their problems in an international context. Whether that will have a future or not, I can't say.
Matthew Price
John, can I ask you, in 30 seconds: what policy response would you like to see from the European Union?
John Dalhuisen
In response to which?
Matthew Price
In response to this issue of people coming across the Mediterranean. Are you advocating an open door policy? Set up a ferry network that runs from North Africa to Italy?
John Dalhuisen
No, not at all. There are already – these are obligations that follow on from your question a little bit. The subjects of the obligations under international law – both human rights law, refugee rights law and indeed obligations under the laws of the sea – are sovereign states, certainly not the EU. There are a series of obligations that fall under all of them (human rights law, refugee rights law and the laws of the sea) that would require certainly Malta and Italy to set up search and rescue systems, at least within their search and rescue zones, that eliminate to the greatest possible extent the possibility of this kind of tragedy occurring. That is already not the case. It was not the case before Mare Nostrum. Mare Nostrum caught it up a little bit, and it is once again not the case now. 6 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A
Then there are additional obligations that extend beyond their respective search and rescue zones, which is much more of a political and moral set of obligations that flow from what I have described as the construction of a broader set of European policies that are pushing people to take these routes. Once you've gone down that route, I think there is a greater degree of responsibilities that are engaged.
So what we would like to see, in short, is a set of search and rescue services that are delivered by a pan- European system, that go beyond just Maltese and Italians: a collective EU response that operates beyond just the territorial waters of Italy and Malta, beyond their search and rescue zones, into the high seas – at least right up to the Libyan territorial waters. Libya is incapable of providing any kind of coast guard or search and rescue services beyond, frankly, 20 metres beyond its border. So that operates along the entirety of the routes that people are taking, with the resources commensurate with the scale of the problem. It is then coordinated and integrated into a post-rescue distribution and processing system. So that's quite a complex set of things to be doing. It's a set of things to be doing that probably exceeds the extent of the individual obligations of EU member states, but is something the EU should be considering as a matter of political responsibility and response to a human tragedy which is, in part at least, of its own making.
Question 4
Are there psychological resources, in addition to physical resources, that Amnesty International and the Red Cross provide, as far as counselling or something along those lines? Also, contrary to some perceptions, the entire African continent is not in distress. So why do immigrants come to Europe instead of another African country that is peaceful?
Matthew Price
It's a great question, I haven't thought of that one before. First of all, Sue, on the psychological help for people coming across, what are you providing?
Sue Le Mesurier
In all the national societies that are at the coal face, as it were – whether Malta, Greece, Italy, Cyprus – they all provide psychosocial support. That's one of the – part of it is around providing comfort and reassurance and helping them trying to find their families, and making them feel safe. Not sort of stressing them out about the legal side of things or whether they're going to apply for asylum. They have seven days normally to be able to apply for asylum, so that's not a priority in the first 24 hours. Particularly if you're talking about unaccompanied children, we're talking about children under the age of 18 – there's more and more of these unaccompanied children who are arriving on these boats, sometimes having travelled for months to try to get to Europe. They are often in a desperate state. All they often want to do is be given a sign of being able to make contact with mum or whoever back home. So we provide a number of different psychosocial support services and help them, so that we take them by the hand, particularly in the case of children, through that process. 7 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A
Matthew Price
And I think probably you're a good person to ask that second question, which I've not really considered in that sense before. What are the migration flows within Africa? Presumably Eritreans are not simply leaving Eritrea and taking this hideous journey through the Sahara to Libya, where many of the women may get raped by smugglers before they even board a boat – presumably there are quite large migration flows within Africa itself.
Sue Le Mesurier
I don't have any particular figures, but certainly Eritreans would be travelling south. You see a large number in Kenya. But if you look at the reception of African countries generally toward migrants from other African countries, it's a much more open policy in terms of being able to cross the borders and to look for employment and perhaps reunite with family members. I think of one particular example where it keeps changing month by month, and that's in the South African coast. A number of migrants from Africa are moving to South Africa [indiscernible] or opportunities there. Their border is sometimes open and sometimes closed. Occasionally the South African government will give an immunity to the migrants that are there, that have crossed without documentation or through indirect means. So they will free things up for them to come along and get some kind of visa application. But others are working under the table and hidden somewhere in the system, which is easy enough to do there. But we do hear stories occasionally of where the South African government will round up a whole lot of people and ship them across the border back to Zambia or Zimbabwe. That can create difficult situations which we, as an organization, are constantly monitoring.
Question 5
I would like to go a bit further with the question you asked, about what would you accept, short of cruise boats and ferries going across from North Africa to Europe. Because it seems to me that it's the legal right of every sovereign state to protect and control its borders. Basically the argument from each of you, unless I've misunderstood completely, is that really the right to protection of migrants should trump that obligation to citizens of the state. Do you think that the current arrangements are wrong and that that should be the case? If it is, isn't the argument that you have to make not with the European Union authorities but with public opinion across Europe?
Matthew Price
That's the central issue. As we were talking about before we came down here, you have public opinion across Europe – not just in this country – which is, broadly speaking, it seems to me, from the vast number of people I've spoken to in Britain in the last few months: not here, thank you; we've got enough foreigners in this country. Elspeth, can I throw that one at you? 8 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A
Elspeth Guild
I think the question of public opinion is always a complex one. The question is also one of, whose public opinion? Which public? And, how is the question presented? One has far less, as far as I'm able to read through the Eurobarometer reports – when we say, should we protect refugees? By a large European public opinion, it's overwhelmingly favourable. What happens between 'should we protect refugees?' to 'I don't like the person next door'? I think it's in that move that we need to look at what has happened in public opinion and who are the actors in public opinion who are participating in that move from 'yes, we want to protect refugees; yes, refugee protection is a core norm to which we subscribe' to 'but I don't like that one'. I think therein lies a question of quite a lot of hypocrisy.
Matthew Price
If there is to be a European Union policy response to this, it does seem that each of the three of you is saying: let's find safer ways to allow desperate people to come into Europe. Where does that leave the nation-state's obligation to protect its borders?
Elspeth Guild
I think there's a very easy solution to dealing with at least half of the problem in the Mediterranean – according to the European Commission, it's Syrians and Eritreans. There is general agreement that there is a terribly murderous civil war going on in Syria and in Eritrea. Lift the visa restriction. If you lift the visa restriction, at least people will be able to arrive in circumstances in dignity and not in these positions of these unbearable trips and this threat to life.
What do you do within your state? What are the measures you can make to reassure people that their lives will not be undermined by others arriving? I think we have a situation which we have all kinds of manufactured shortages of various kinds of public services through a series of policies that have been taken. It's for the economists to discuss that. One only needs to read a bit of Thomas Piketty to say that perhaps we have made a number of errors in economic policy which have resulted in a particularly fragile situation, of a number of people who feel threatened by the arrival of others.
Matthew Price
John, who do you reduce the restrictions on visas for? How do you pick your conflict? Should each individual country in Europe just simply say: if you're desperate, come in?
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John Dalhuisen
There are all sorts of different criteria you could have for who you would provide humanitarian visas for, that you would provide additional resettlement places to. There's significant margin for European Union countries to increase the offer it makes in this field. The number of resettlement places offered by most European countries is in the hundreds, a few thousand. It's, frankly, pretty pitiful.
There is a real question of where you draw the line on this kind of thing. The idea that you would just waive visa requirements for every single conflict and make it a hit list – the reality is then you end up with potentially very large numbers. That, I think, becomes very difficult. I think you can certainly look at things like facilitating family reunification. There are an obvious set of things that with a criteria of humanity, you would be able to increase the range of people you gave that kind of facilitated access to, without it effectively resulting in an open border system.
The human rights obligation, the refugee convention obligation, is to make it possible to arrive. You can't prevent anyone from arriving. I think there's a distinction there. I don't think any of us are actually saying that there should be an open border policy. Every state has a legitimate interest and a perfect entitlement to limit and control entrance and exit from its borders. Everyone does it, they can do it, and so much the better for it. The obligation is simply to ensure that those who do arrive at your borders are able to present an asylum application if they believe they are being persecuted. To deny that person who then enters into your – you have them in your jurisdiction, you have them in your hands, and to send them back to the other side, this is clearly a problem. That's the problem at issue here. It's providing avenues, at borders or others, people can present an asylum request.
The search and rescue obligation is a little bit different. But there again, there are search and rescue obligations that were imposed on certainly the maritime states. These are obligations that need to be fully respected and are not. My suggestion there is that in virtue of the flows that are coming through and the pressures on them – everyone wants to go to Italy and Malta, it's only fair after all for the rest of the EU to help them to meet their individual search and rescue obligations.
Matthew Price
Sue, just a quick one – how, then, do we square the circle? Because the majority of people are arriving in Italy; Italy can't cope with having the majority of people arriving in Italy. How do we then move those people out across the rest of Europe? Does there need to be a solid policy that says Britain takes 10 per cent, Germany takes 12 per cent?
Sue Le Mesurier
I think one of the things would be to, in the same way that they lifted the Dublin agreement in relation to Greece, they perhaps could look at doing a similar thing for Italy, saying that the Dublin agreement doesn't apply there and people can't be returned, and there should be an ability for people, when they arrive in Italy, to be able to apply for visas and for asylum and to be able to move on to wherever their family members might be. In the same way that Sweden has enabled an open – and recognized the validity of Syrian and Eritrean refugees as asylum seekers, and said: if you have family members here, 10 Europe's Asylum and Migration Crisis: Q&A
family reunification – and as I mentioned in my statement, the ability and the necessity, from a psychosocial and from other perspectives, of being able to be with your family is integral to being able to move on with your life.
Matthew Price
Elspeth, is it possible in 10 seconds to say whether we are anywhere near that sort of dialogue within the European Union?
Elspeth Guild
I don't think so. I think we have a ways to go and I think we have to reframe the debate in terms of the realities of the situation in front of us, and the humanitarian necessity to respond properly to this debate.
Matthew Price
Lovely. Thank you very much, all three. I hope you've enjoyed it. A Syrian woman who I met in Lampedusa, who had just arrived off a boat, said to me: we almost died in Syria and we almost died coming here to Europe, but thanks god we are here in Europe. Well, it's going to keep happening, so there do need to be some policy responses to this. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming.