Europe Closes its Doors

​​"Anyone who still thinks they can sail illegally to Italy must know they will be sent back to where they came from as soon as they have been given humanitarian help." The Italian interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu is calling for harsh action against refugees.

In early October, his government deported more than 1,100 people to Tripoli within a week, without even checking their reasons for fleeing their home countries. Representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) did not get access to the persons concerned for days – nor did they do so in Libya.

According to reports by Italian television station SkyTG 24, Libya sent hundreds of the deportees into the desert on the southern border of the country. In a similar move in August 2004, the regime had banished eighteen refugees to the border region of Niger. They died of thirst.

Italy, a founding member of the European Community, has wilfully breached the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Rome has violated the principles of the international protection of refugees and of the European protection of human rights. Nevertheless, there was no noteworthy reaction from the EU member countries or institutions.

Only individual politicians, human rights groups and the UNHCR uttered protests. If the EU takes its own principles seriously, the Italian policy must be qualified as a breach of the principles of freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law (Article 6 of the EU contract) and the threat of sanctions must be pronounced.

Hazardous trips across the Mediterranean

Every day, People risk their lives in the attempt to reach Europe from across the Mediterranean. Thousands die because they make these journeys in overcrowded and un-seaworthy boats.

According to cautious estimates, at least 5000 people have thus drowned in the past ten years. Michael Pugh of Plymouth University estimates that some 2,000 people vanish annually in the Mediterranean on their way to Europe (Guardian, October 9, 2004).

​​The matter became a hot media topic this summer, when reports on refugee boats in distress, stranded or capsized abounded in the course of the debate on the "Cap Anamur". At the time, Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, started a new debate on asylum instead of receiving the castaways in Germany immediately and without red tape.

Schily suggested moving the bureaucratic handling of European asylum applications to Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. Persons saved from distress at sea would be brought back to Africa and the asylum proceedings carried out there.

In Schily's view, officers in Northern Africa should determine who qualifies for the right to asylum and these people should then, with the support of the EU and as a rule, find refuge in a region near their home. Schily emphasises that refuge in Europe can only be considered in exceptional cases and voluntarily by the government concerned.

The constant factor in Schily's merry-go-round of ideas is that for refugees, all roads lead to Northern Africa or straight back to the countries of origin. In August, the German interior minister and his Italian counterpart, Pisanu, agreed on a joint initiative at the EU level.

Inspired by Schily and supported by colleagues from the Baltic States, the Austrian interior minister, Ernst Strasser, proposed setting up an EU asylum centre for Chechens in Ukraine.

Back to Northern Africa

These ministers want to outsource European protection of refugees – without concern for international agreements and in disregard of the human rights situation where such processing centres are to be located. Morocco, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia are countries people flee from.

In Libya, hundreds of critics and dissidents of the Gaddafi dictatorship have disappeared. Many have been tortured or executed. The fundamental freedoms are restricted and the death penalty applies for a whole series of minor offences.

Schily's suggestion fits in nicely with the asylum approach that has gathered momentum in Europe in recent years. This includes military armament at the borders, sending back asylum seekers to so-called "safe third countries" and the implementation of fast-track asylum processing in the "transition zones", to name a few.

The result is that, viewed on a global scale, only very few refugees make it to Europe anymore. According to the EU commission, 85 percent are now living in countries of their region of origin – mostly in catastrophic conditions.

In July 2004, the U.S. Committee for Refugees indicated that from around 12 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, 7.35 million have already spent more than ten years in camps and still lack any positive outlook.

There are 160,000 Saharawis in Algeria. Over 300,000 Liberians, more than 300,000 Angolans and over half a million Sudanese have fled to neighbouring countries. They all are the objects of emergency aid. Time and time again, even the minimum standards of the UNHCR are not met because there is not enough money or personnel.

This year, the World Food Programme has once again had to halve the rations for numerous refugee camps, which were already at their absolute minimum. The majority of the approximately 23 million internally displaced persons worldwide, who have not fled across borders, also live in utter misery.

"The European Union is gambling away its credibility in the international refugee and human rights debate". This was the conclusion of a joint statement by refugee and human rights organisations from throughout Europe in March 2004.

Shifting the responsibility to Third world countries

One gets the impression that the common asylum policy of the EU is not striving for the protection of refugees, but rather to protect Europe from refugees. Instead of creating a European right to asylum, the EU is off-loading the responsibility to foreign countries.

The European "harmonisation" of the right to asylum shows no regard for international standards, acts as a negative model for other regions and documents the mutual reluctance to receive refugees.

The high number of deaths is primarily due to the escape routes becoming ever more dangerous and the fortress of Europe becoming ever more efficiently sealed off. For refugees, there is practically no legal way to get to Europe any more with border controls becoming tighter and tighter. Those who want to enter Europe have to do so illegally.

Many use small, unsafe dinghies because these are not as easily detected as large boats. Anyone who really wants to prevent death in the Mediterranean must consider how refugees and migrants can come to Europe legally.

Safe access routes for asylum seekers and a liberal right of asylum are necessary. Both are indispensable for EU members to do justice to their international obligations arising from the Geneva Convention on Refugees.

Rich Europe has a duty to unburden the poor regions of origin. The EU should provide the means for this and install a liberal resettlement programme, as the European Commission suggested recently. Otherwise, thousands will continue to die at the outer borders of the EU.

Karl Kopp

© Magazine for Development and Cooperation 11/2004

Karl Kopp is in charge of European Affairs at the German human rights organisation Pro Asyl.