tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/mediterranean-migration-35924/articlesMediterranean migration – The Conversation2024-03-27T09:52:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265302024-03-27T09:52:04Z2024-03-27T09:52:04ZWhy EU information campaigns are failing to deter migrants from leaving<p>It was everywhere on the news and social media. In September 2023, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230918-italy-extends-detention-period-to-deter-migrant-crossings-after-lampedusa-surge">10,000 migrants arrived on the island of Lampedusa</a>, more than doubling the island’s population of 6,000 and overwhelming its resources. The migrants – mostly men from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East – had to sleep outside, with the island’s reception centre only designed for 400 people.</p>
<p>Days after, Italy’s Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, visited the island with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who presented a <a href="https://cyprus.representation.ec.europa.eu/news/10-point-plan-lampedusa-2023-09-18_en">ten-point plan</a> to stem the migrant flow. These included calls to “increase awareness and communication campaigns to disincentivise the Mediterranean crossings” and to “step up cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM)”.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the fanfare with which these announcements were made, their methods were hardly new.</p>
<p>A leading actor in the field, the IOM has been organising <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230294882_9">such campaigns</a> for decades. One of the most notable ones was <a href="https://www.migrantsasmessengers.org/">“Migrants as Messengers”</a>, which took place across Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria from December 2017 to March 2019. Throughout the campaign, town halls screened video testimonies of migrant returnees, followed by Q&As with migrants who would act as “messengers” to deter them from embarking onto the perilous journey.</p>
<p>In 2022, the UNHCR also launched the <a href="https://www.tellingtherealstory.org/en/">“Telling the Real Story” campaign</a> across a number of African countries. Drawing mainly on a website and a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tellingtherealstory/">Facebook page</a>, the campaign aims at “telling the real story” by emphasising the terrible ordeals that await would-be irregular immigrants, such as human smuggling and trafficking.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Telling the Real Story”, a video aimed at dissuading would-be emigrants.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The argument is always the same: would-be emigrants in Africa are unaware of the risks and must be informed so that they make the right decision – which is to stay at home or migrate only if they have the right to do so. This message is complemented by information on the opportunities in the country of origin and on Africans’ duty to contribute to the development of their country.</p>
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À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sauvetage-des-migrants-naufrages-en-mediterranee-comment-la-politique-de-lue-doit-evoluer-222453">Sauvetage des migrants-naufragés en Méditerranée : comment la politique de l’UE doit évoluer</a>
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<h2>Hundreds of campaigns</h2>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/EU-funded-information-campaigns-targeting-potential-migrants.pdf">report</a> from the <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/">European research programme “Bridges”</a>, the EU has spent more than €23 million since 2015 to organise nearly 130 information campaigns.</p>
<p>While Europe is at the forefront of such initiatives, it is not alone. Australia has distinguished itself with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/11/government-launches-new-graphic-campaign-to-deter-asylum-seekers">particularly biting messages</a>, with a 2014 <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2019/fa-190801764-document-released-p4.PDF">campaign</a> directly addressing people tempted by irregular immigration in stark terms: “NO WAY. You will not make Australia home”. Years later, in 2019, the strategy was enthusiastically touted by the then US president, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7186189/Trump-praises-Aust-asylum-seeker-policy.html">Donald Trump</a>.</p>
<p>Campaigns can also be organised by private companies or NGOs. For example, the social enterprise <a href="https://seefar.org/">Seefar</a> carried out an extensive information campaign on the risks of migration in Senegal in 2021, reaching 1,987 young people across the country, according to the organisation. In addition to its rescue missions in the Mediterranean, the Spanish association Proactiva Open Arms also ran an awareness campaign in the same country, the <a href="https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2020/04/ngos-dilemma">“Origin” project</a>.</p>
<p>However, all these initiatives and players are faced with a major problem: no one is able to demonstrate the effectiveness of these campaigns.</p>
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À lire aussi :
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<h2>Difficult to assess effectiveness</h2>
<p>As the budgets devoted to them increase, however, some studies have begun to take a serious look at the impact of campaigns.</p>
<p>In 2018, an <a href="https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/evaluating_the_impact.pdf">IOM study</a> pointed out that campaigns are difficult to evaluate because they have a dual objective: to slash irregular immigration, but also to provide information.</p>
<p>Sometimes only one of the two objectives is achieved: in 2023, a <a href="https://publications.iom.int/books/irregular-migration-west-africa-robust-evaluation-peer-peer-awareness-raising-activities-four">study</a> devoted to the IOM’s “Migrants as Messengers” showed that this campaign did increase the level of information, while failing to reduce departures.</p>
<p>Overall, although it has been organising such campaigns for 30 years, the IOM has carried out only a few, belated impact studies. This is because seriously gauging campaigns’ effectiveness is expensive – but it also appears that European states prefer to multiply campaigns rather than fund evaluations.</p>
<p>The situation is even more confusing with other actors. Seefar, for example, <a href="https://seefar.org/the-migrant-project/#salamat-article">claims that</a>, in follow-up interviews, 58% of its campaign viewers reported having given up their migration project. But in the absence of basic information regarding this finding, like the number of interviews or the timeline over which interviewees were followed, it is difficult to know whether this is more than a wet-finger approach to justify the funds received by this private company.</p>
<p>In terms of independent research, a <a href="https://www.udi.no/globalassets/global/forskning-fou_i/rapport_11_19_web.pdf">study by the Institute for Social Research in Oslo</a> in 2019 looked at migrants from Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia in transit through Sudan with the intention of continuing on to Europe.</p>
<p>The aim was to evaluate a campaign launched in 2015 by Norway, entitled <a href="https://www.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-immigration-policy-norway/social-media-campaign-for-asylum-seekers-draws-angry-trolls/1448896">“Stricter asylum regulations in Norway”</a>, which used Facebook to inform potential migrants of the slim chances of obtaining asylum in that country. As with any advertisement, Facebook’s algorithm was designed to identify Internet users searching for information on immigration, Europe or visas, and to offer them targeted deterrent messages.</p>
<p>The study confirmed that migrants are connected and use social networks to obtain information and organise their migration. But while they have sometimes heard of European campaigns, most have not seen them. They know about the terrible living conditions of migrants in Libya, for example, but this does not dissuade them from leaving to escape the impasse of their situation.</p>
<h2>Migrants deported from Europe called to testify</h2>
<p>In 2023, a <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/publications/why-information-campaigns-struggle-to-dissuade-migrants-from-coming-to-europe/">team of political scientists from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel</a> analysed the information available to young people tempted to emigrate from the Gambia to Europe, and how the campaigns affected their decision to leave. As in Sudan, the information on the risks of irregular immigration happened to correspond to what these young people already know. But in the absence of prospects at home, they will leave anyway, fully aware of the facts.</p>
<p>Another study carried out <a href="https://www.bridges-migration.eu/publications/a-comparative-study-on-the-role-of-narratives-in-migratory-decision-making/">with Afghans in transit through Turkey</a> came to similar conclusions.</p>
<p>However, this work also revealed another problem: the recipients of these campaigns do not take them seriously because they believe them to be biased by Europe’s political objectives – and so they prefer to get their information from relatives, or even smugglers.</p>
<p>This result has prompted new strategies. Following the example of “Migrants as Messengers”, campaigns known as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08865655.2022.2108111">“peer to peer”</a> (“de pair-à-pair”) ask migrants expelled from Europe to talk about their experience to <a href="https://jaspertjaden.com/policy/2019_migrants-as-messengers_the-impact-of-peer-to-peer-communication-on-potential-migrants-in-senegal/">those who might be tempted to imitate them</a>. This is part of a technique known as <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2611/">“unbranding”</a>, a marketing concept that refers to the omission of the brand name on a product in order to sell it better. In the case of the campaigns, this amounts to concealing the European and international institutions <a href="https://migrantprotection.iom.int/en/spotlight/articles/initiative/constantly-evolving-awareness-raising-campaign-aware-migrants">that fund them</a>.</p>
<p>Another strategy is not to target potential migrants, but the local actors who influence perceptions of migration, starting with the media and artists. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) works with <a href="https://theconversation.com/quand-la-lutte-contre-limmigration-irreguliere-devient-une-question-de-culture-112200">musicians popular with young Africans</a>, as well as with journalists.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://www.unesco.org/fr/articles/un-forum-dechanges-avec-des-journalistes-et-managers-de-medias-pour-une-narrative-diversifiee-et-de">Unesco</a> trains Senegalese journalists to talk about migration.</p>
<h2>Trade-offs with freedom of expression</h2>
<p>Against a backdrop of precariousness for media and cultural professionals, the support of international organisations is welcome, but raises the question of freedom of expression and freedom of the press on this politically sensitive subject.</p>
<p>In Morocco, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RMJMigrations/">Network of Moroccan Journalists on Migration</a> has been set up to deal with migration issues independently, although this does not prevent these journalists from taking part in training activities organised by international organisations and supported by European funding.</p>
<p>In Gambia, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08865655.2022.2156375">recent study</a> highlighted the dilemmas faced by local journalists who are asked to spread messages about the dangers of immigration while trying to maintain their independence.</p>
<p>In the eyes of their advocates, these campaigns are justified on the grounds that the migrants who die in the Mediterranean are the victims of misleading information from smugglers. Providing information would therefore save lives. But there are no studies to support this hypothesis: on the contrary, it appears that migrants leave in the full knowledge of the risks they are exposing themselves to.</p>
<p>Faced with this uncomfortable reality, it is possible that information campaigns only serve to give European leaders the feeling that they are acting to prevent the tragedies that result from their own policies. After all, it is partly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1465116516633299">due to a lack of opportunities to migrate</a> legally that many migrants try their luck irregularly, with all the risks that this entails.</p>
<p>The scarcity of available evaluations shows that the effectiveness of the campaigns is not a priority for European states. This migration policy tool would therefore have primarily symbolic value – as proof that Europe is concerned about the fate of the many people it does not want on its soil.</p>
<p>But this political strategy nonetheless has very real effects on local players, and on the ability of societies in the South to debate independently the major political issues raised by international migration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mélodie Beaujeu is a member of Désinfox-Migrations, an association fighting disinformation around migration. The latter has received funding from the Porticus foundation as well as the Foundation for France.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antoine Pécoud ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The argument is a familiar one: African citizens are unaware of the risks tied to the perilous journey across the Mediterranean and the West must therefore enlighten them.Antoine Pécoud, Professeur de sociologie, Université Sorbonne Paris NordMélodie Beaujeu, Consultante et chercheuse, affiliée à l'Institut Convergences Migrations, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2078802023-06-19T12:32:56Z2023-06-19T12:32:56ZThe Greek migrant shipwreck is another preventable tragedy at the borders of Europe<p>The Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy has been described as the “<a href="https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/media/00847a5e-8604-45dc-a0fe-37d920056673/Directorate_A_redacted-2.pdf">world’s most dangerous maritime crossing</a>”. This was proven once again last week in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/15/greece-refugee-shipwreck-rescuers-scour-sea-for-survivors">tragic shipwreck</a> of a boat full of men, women and children, around 50 miles away from the southern Greek town of Pylos.</p>
<p>The boat was being tracked by the Hellenic coastguard who said that those on board <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/greek-coast-guard-mediterranean-questions-mounting-over-the-circumstances-of-the-sea-tragedy-off-greece/">refused their assistance</a> repeatedly, and that people on board said they wanted to continue to Italy. It was for this reason that no active rescue took place, according to the coastguard. </p>
<p>But activist groups, including <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/faq_en/">Alarm Phone</a>, an emergency hotline for refugees in distress in the Mediterranean, have contested this account. In an email to authorities, published by investigative journalists <a href="https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/they-are-urgently-asking-for-help-the-sos-that-was-ignored/">We Are Solomon</a>, Alarm Phone alerted authorities to the vessel’s location, and reported that “several people, among them some babies, are very sick. The people on the boat said that they cannot go on”. </p>
<p>Mixed reports and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/16/timeline-how-the-refugee-boat-tragedy-unfolded-off-greece">timelines</a> have continued to come out, and survivors’ <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/emotional-reunion-amid-despair-greece-searches-shipwreck-survivors-2023-06-16/">stories and experiences</a> are now starting to be reported. </p>
<p>Alarm Phone <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/2023/06/14/europes-shield/">claimed</a> that Maltese and Italian authorities were also aware of the vessel’s situation, and that “European authorities could have sent out adequate rescue resources without delay. They failed to do so because their desire to prevent arrivals was stronger than the need to rescue hundreds of lives”. </p>
<p>International lawyers and former <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/greek-coast-guard-mediterranean-questions-mounting-over-the-circumstances-of-the-sea-tragedy-off-greece/">members of the Hellenic coastguard</a> have said that <a href="https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/they-are-urgently-asking-for-help-the-sos-that-was-ignored/">authorities should have rescued the boat</a> regardless of whether passengers requested help, not least because of the vessel’s unseaworthy nature and overcrowding. As the RNLI has made clear in the UK, it is a duty – both moral and under international maritime law – to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/rnli-hits-out-migrant-taxi-service-accusations">save lives at sea</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/turning-back-migrant-boats-what-does-the-international-law-of-the-sea-say-167679">Turning back migrant boats: what does the international law of the sea say?</a>
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<h2>Pushbacks</h2>
<p>This is far from the first time the Hellenic coastguard has faced accusations of endangering asylum seekers’ lives at sea. In March 2020, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, thanked Greece for acting as the European Union’s “shield”. </p>
<p>She pledged to work in solidarity with the country to ensure that as a priority “<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_20_380">order is maintained</a>” at Greece’s external border, also the external border of the EU. </p>
<p>What this means in practice has become clear with accusations and mounting evidence that the Hellenic coastguard is <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-greece-migrant-pushback-probe-kyriakos-mitsotakis-election">conducting illegal pushbacks</a>, preventing access to the right to claim asylum once a person has entered a state’s territory.</p>
<p>Human rights advocates, <a href="https://left.eu/issues/publications/black-book-of-pushbacks-2022/">MEPs</a> and <a href="https://freemovement.org.uk/frontex-pushbacks-and-the-failure-to-protect-the-right-to-claim-asylum-in-greece/">other non-governmental organisations</a> have repeatedly accused both the Hellenic coastguard and Frontex (the European border and coastguard agency) of involvement in pushbacks.</p>
<p>In October 2022, a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/frontex-ap-athens-turkey-greek-b2202276.html">report by the EU watchdog Olaf</a> published by <a href="https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/media/00847a5e-8604-45dc-a0fe-37d920056673/Directorate_A_redacted-2.pdf">German media</a> accused Frontex of covering up or failing to investigate serious allegations of human rights violations. </p>
<p>A video published by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/world/europe/greece-migrants-abandoned.html">New York Times</a> in May 2023 appeared to show coastguard vessels abandoning people at sea that had previously landed in Greece. Again, this would be a violation of their rights under international law to claim asylum, having landed on the island of Lesbos, in Greek territory.</p>
<p>If the Hellenic coastguard’s account of the recent shipwreck is true, and that those on board the vessel wanted to continue to Italy and avoid Greek territory, it’s important to consider why this would be the case. One reason may very well be the growing awareness of the risk of pushbacks.</p>
<p>These events suggest that Europe’s “shield” is not prioritising saving the lives of those seeking safety, but rather, as von der Leyen stated in that same press conference in 2020, making sure “order is maintained” when “migrants that have been lured through false promises into this desperate situation” find themselves at Europe’s door. </p>
<h2>Deterrence policies</h2>
<p>In 2016, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/donald-tusk-economic-migrants-do-not-come-to-europe">Donald Tusk</a>, then president of the European Council, warned people making the dangerous crossings to the EU. He said: “Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing.”</p>
<p>Statements like this wrongly suggest that people make these journeys out of choice, that a far easier alternative exists. But, as Somali British poet Warsan Shire <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/let-them-in-where-s-the-poetry-in-politics-what-is-the-middle-class-trump-and-the-know-nothings-1.3223214/no-one-puts-their-children-in-a-boat-unless-1.3224831">put it poignantly</a>: “You have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”</p>
<p>Making these journeys less safe will not prevent them from happening. The failure to rescue, the decision to pushback, only puts the lives of people in boats at risk, it does not prevent other people from making those journeys in the future. </p>
<p>Shipwrecks like this are preventable, but only if EU policy moves away from its focus on closing borders and “maintaining order”, and towards one of humanitarian action. This would mean the opening of <a href="https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/information-people-fleeing-war-ukraine/preparing-leave-ukraine_en">genuinely safe routes</a> for people seeking safety, that do not rely on them entering the territory of a state on a crowded, dangerous vessel to be able to make an asylum claim.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Bird has worked with a number of NGOs and grassroots organisations working to support displaced people in Greece. </span></em></p>This is far from the first time the Hellenic coastguard has faced accusations of endangering asylum seekers lives at sea.Gemma Bird, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1458992020-09-10T14:45:40Z2020-09-10T14:45:40ZFire destroys Moria refugee camp: another tragic wake-up call for the EU’s asylum policy<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/lesbos-refugee-camp-fire-forces-thousands-to-evacuate">Fires</a> at a reception centre for asylum seekers on the Greek island of Lesbos have left thousands of people without shelter. Around 13,000 people – including those from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and west Africa – lived at the Moria Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) in a space intended for just over 3,000. Most will have lost the few belongings and flimsy and insufficient housing they had. </p>
<p>Lesbos is now in an official state of emergency. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/09/catastrophe-warning-as-thousands-left-homeless-by-lesbos-refugee-camp-fire">Ships are being sent</a> to help shelter those left sleeping on the roads outside the camp, some of which were <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54082201">blocked by police</a> to stop people entering nearby villages. Meanwhile, there is confusion over how asylum cases will be progressed when many of the administration zones in the camp were also damaged by the fires. </p>
<p>This fire is just the latest in a number of tragic cases of fire and violence, as well as inhumane conditions, endured by those seeking asylum on the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos. It is a stark reminder of the failures of the current system and the need for change.</p>
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<p>COVID-19 led to increased restrictions on the freedom of movement of those in the island centres, making already dangerous conditions a lot worse. While restrictions imposed across Greece in late March have now eased, the date for lifting the lockdown on the island centres <a href="https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/greece-extends-lockdown-more-120000-migrants-refugees">continues to be pushed back</a>. Other residents of the five islands and tourists have been free to meet for coffee, go to the beach, or go out for dinner, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/04/refugee-covid-case-sparks-closed-camps-fears-on-lesbos">RIC residents have had their freedom of movement restricted in scorching heat</a>. They were left in unsuitable conditions, with limited access to sanitation, food and water. The risk of COVID-19 remains high, and <a href="https://www.ekathimerini.com/256704/article/ekathimerini/news/35-migrants-in-moria-found-positive-for-coronavirus">35 people tested positive</a> in Moria before the fires. </p>
<h2>Not a fair system</h2>
<p>So what should the EU and the Greek government do now? The day after the Moria fire, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, <a href="http://www.ekathimerini.com/256747/article/ekathimerini/news/commission-head-says-ready-to-support-greece-after-moria-fire">said that the commission</a> is ready to support Greece, and that its priority is “the safety of those left without shelter”. </p>
<p>Yet as recently as March von der Leyen thanked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/migration-eu-praises-greece-as-shield-after-turkey-opens-border">Greece for being Europe’s <em>aspida</em> (shield)</a> because of its location at the EU’s border with Turkey. </p>
<p>A situation in which Greece is understood to be Europe’s shield, one which pushes the responsibility for migration and border policy to neighbouring states, is one that will inevitably lead to overcrowding in camps on the Aegean islands as well as lives lost at sea in the Mediterranean. So too will an approach that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/21/dutch-government-under-growing-pressure-to-take-in-child-refugees">ignores offers by cities in the Netherlands</a> to rehouse refugees as national governments continue to rely on Greece. Policies designed to push back, return or prevent people from entering Europe will not ensure genuinely safe and legal pathways for crossing borders. </p>
<p>The EU’s policy has allowed Greece to build <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/25/clashes-over-greeces-migrant-detention-camp-plans-continue">closed detention centres</a> on the Aegean islands and to speed up the asylum process by relying on <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/29/greece-asylum-overhaul-threatens-rights">non-specialist case assessors drawn from the police force</a>. These measures do not guarantee a safe, fair and just system. Under <a href="https://ijrcenter.org/refugee-law/">international law</a> people have the right to claim asylum, they also have the right to cross borders to be able to make that claim. To detain people without a time limit does not respect this.</p>
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<img alt="Fire destroys Moria migrant camp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C90%2C3474%2C2238&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357489/original/file-20200910-15-1rewcui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands were left without shelter after fires at the Moria camp on September 9.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stratis Balaskas/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rebuilding Moria is not the answer</h2>
<p>So what is the alternative? First, it is not to rebuild Moria. Neither Greece nor the EU can continue to rely on the five Greek islands as a space to hold people for months, often years, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/17/moria-is-a-hell-new-arrivals-describe-life-in-a-greek-refugee-camp">unsuitable conditions</a>. </p>
<p>At the start of 2020 there were 40,000 people housed on the islands – although collectively the RICs were built to support closer to 5,500. The numbers have decreased <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2020/4/5e9707ed4/un-agencies-welcome-first-relocation-unaccompanied-children-greece.html">due to relocations of unaccompanied minors to other EU states</a> and transfers to alternative accommodation in mainland Greece. But the current policy does not prevent the number of people stuck in the reception centres from going back up.</p>
<p>To genuinely change the conditions facing those claiming asylum requires a radical rethinking of the collective European response to asylum, one that recognises the positive outcomes of welcoming refugees. </p>
<p>Such a system relies on a rethinking of the rhetoric surrounding migration and refugees. Europe needs a new welcoming stance – one that is focused on offering people in vulnerable situations a chance at a stable life, the ability to work, to study and to have their rights to a family life protected. This means opening up rather than closing down borders. It means recognising that passports and place of birth are a matter of luck and nothing more. It means an end to the reliance on Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos as places where people’s lives are put on hold as they wait months for a decision on where they go next.</p>
<p>If this change doesn’t occur, if the islands remain overcrowded, reliant on detention, then tragically it is more than likely just a matter of time until the next disaster happens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Bird does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After fire destroyed a migrant reception centre on the Greek island of Lesbos, the EU needs a more welcoming approach to asylum.Gemma Bird, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1418222020-07-08T11:50:01Z2020-07-08T11:50:01ZBlack lives are being lost in the Mediterranean – but the world remains silent<p>A black <a href="https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/25678/intercepted-and-returned-to-libya-a-common-fate-of-europe-bound-migrants">baby was born</a> on a boat on the Mediterranean Sea in late June. Its mother was trying to escape from Libya, together with 92 men and women. Help was on the way, with the <a href="https://mediterranearescue.org/en/news-en/93-people-rejected-including-one-woman-who-gave-birth-6-dead-its-yesterdays-story-june-26th/">Italian rescue vessel Mare Jonio</a> nearing the boat in distress, ready to rescue them to a place of safety in Europe. </p>
<p>But Libyan forces were quicker, intercepting the boat on Europe’s behalf and returning the migrants to the Libyan war zone against their will. Upon disembarkation, survivors spoke of six people who lost their lives during the odyssey.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1276768980758380544"}"></div></p>
<p>Official statistics record <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean">377 deaths so far in 2020</a> but these are rough estimates, and the true figure is certainly considerably higher. Even in known shipwrecks, of which there were three in the central Mediterranean just in June, numbers of deaths are often unclear. And as there are few official investigations into these shipwrecks, the number who die often remains unclear, leaving families and friends of the disappeared in endless cycles of hope and despair.</p>
<p>Despite the absence of data on the ethnicity of those who lose their lives at sea, <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean">statistics on migrant crossings</a> register that the vast majority of people originate from Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa or South Asia.</p>
<h2>When black lives don’t matter at sea</h2>
<p>During a period when Black Lives Matter protests are reverberating around the world following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the silence around black lives lost at sea is astounding. </p>
<p>If the video footage of Floyd’s killing was not enough to reveal his cause of death, the <a href="https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/MNHENNE/2020/06/01/file_attachments/1464238/2020-3700%20Floyd,%20George%20Perry%20Update%206.1.2020.pdf">independent medical examination</a> confirmed death by homicide: “Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” </p>
<p>The process of drowning is also cruel. <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783540296560">In medical terms</a>, someone who drowns becomes hypercarbic, hypoxemic and acidotic. They experience circulatory arrest, multiple organ dysfunction and, in the absence of rapid intervention and resuscitation, death.</p>
<p>Actions taken by border guards at sea may be less visible than a police officer kneeling on a person’s neck – and are rarely caught on camera – but they are no less violent. </p>
<p>Over the past few months, European authorities have left hundreds of people <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/148432">consciously in distress and adrift</a> at sea, merely <a href="https://eu-libya.info/">watching them from the sky</a>. Some have attacked vulnerable people and sabotaged their boats while <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/greece-refugees-attacked-in-the-aegean/a-53977151">wearing paramilitary-style masks</a>. Others have threatened people at sea <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/20/we-give-you-30-minutes-malta-turns-migrant-boat-away-with-directions-to-italy">at gunpoint</a>, preventing them from landing, or left migrants in need offshore in the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/italy-malta-reject-52-migrants-stranded-animal-cargo-ship-200706073633394.html">cattle cages</a> of a livestock cargo ship. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346063/original/file-20200707-46-1f8n7q5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Migrants on board the Talia livestock cargo ship that was refused entry to Italy and Malta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Talia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>European politicians such as the EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell <a href="https://euobserver.com/foreign/148528">expressed shock</a> about the “abuse of power” by the police in the US in the wake of Floyd’s killing. But they have remained silent on Malta’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/19/exclusive-12-die-as-malta-uses-private-ships-to-push-migrants-back-to-libya">acts of non-assistance and push-backs</a> that cost at least 12 lives in April. They have also stayed silent on Malta’s mass incarceration of 425 vulnerable people in <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/malta-commissions-fourth-tourist-boat-as-425-migrants-held-offshore.794873">floating detention centres</a> off Europe’s coast. And few politicians have spoken up against reports of <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/videos-and-eyewitness-accounts-greece-apparently-abandoning-refugees-at-sea-a-84c06c61-7f11-4e83-ae70-3905017b49d5">systematic attacks</a> by Greek coastguards on migrant boats in the Aegean. </p>
<h2>Silence and impunity</h2>
<p>Deaths in the Mediterranean are the result of racist ways in which the rich countries of the north govern and police human movement, particularly those emerging from countries with ongoing conflict or severe poverty. The philosopher <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691089904/we-the-people-of-europe">Étienne Balibar</a> once referred to these structural conditions of segregation as producing “global apartheid”.</p>
<p>It’s estimated that more than <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean">19,000 lives</a> have been lost in the Mediterranean since 2014. Relatives of the dead and disappeared, as well as activist supporters, are desperately trying to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/vdb6u1mrrv/the-boat-that-disappeared">raise awareness</a> about this mass dying. They struggle, however, to be heard.</p>
<p>It is particularly revealing that, even in a moment of global attention on issues of racial inequality, certain lives – those who fall between global frontiers – are erased from public consciousness. Such erasure is the result of a deep-seated Western-centric imagination of what lives count or are <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2339-judith-butler-precariousness-and-grievability-when-is-life-grievable">deemed worthy to grieve over</a> when lost. </p>
<p>Some social movements are beginning to make connections between systems of violence and segregation within nation states and those global ones that segregate between populations worldwide. In the US, calls to defund or even abolish the police are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/behind-defund-the-police-and-abolish-ice-is-a-shared-hope-that-more-dads-make-it-home/2020/06/20/a8c0969a-b28a-11ea-8f56-63f38c990077_story.html">slowly connecting</a> to issues around migration control, including calls to defund and abolish <a href="https://www.ice.gov/">Immigration and Customs Enforcement</a>.</p>
<p>In Europe, similar calls, for example to defund and abolish the European border agency Frontex are rarely heard. Carola Rackete, captain of one of the ships run by the NGO Sea-Watch, says it’s <a href="https://twitter.com/CaroRackete/status/1274277333130772481">difficult to make the case to abolish Frontex</a> when “the majority of EU citizens don’t know that agency even exists, less so what they do”.</p>
<p>Such awareness, however, is desperately needed. The expiration of black and brown lives at sea must be connected to <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/2020/07/06/also-in-the-central-mediterranean-sea-black-lives-matter/?post_type_release_type=post">Europe’s border practices</a> and policies, in the same way that Floyd’s death is being connected to racist policing in the US. In order to do so, however, we would first have to acknowledge that black and brown lives also matter at sea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is affiliated with the activist network Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Official statistics record 377 deaths in the Mediterranean in 2020, but the true figure is likely to be much higher.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1378402020-05-13T10:30:16Z2020-05-13T10:30:16ZMigration: how Europe is using coronavirus to reinforce its hostile environment in the Mediterranean<p>“You have to understand,” Warsan Shire writes in her poem <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI9D92Xiygo">Home</a>, “that no one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land.” </p>
<p>But what do you do when not only the land of departure but also the land of arrival becomes unsafe?</p>
<p>In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, some European countries have begun to implement a new strategy to reject migrants travelling on precarious boats: declaring themselves unsafe. </p>
<p>On April 7, and for the first time in history, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/italy-declares-own-ports-unsafe-to-stop-migrants-disembarking">Italy announced</a> that due to the health emergency, Italian harbours could no longer be considered “safe places” for migrant landings. Two days later, <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/malta-says-it-can-no-longer-rescue-accept-migrants/">Malta followed suit</a>, stating it would be in the migrants’ own interest not to endanger their lives at sea. </p>
<p>As a result, hundreds of migrants have been stuck at sea in the past few weeks, somewhere between war-torn Libya and “unsafe” Europe. Some were eventually rescued by <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/78-rescued-migrants-still-stranded-at-sea-on-cargo-ship.789971">commercial vessels</a> but <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/second-captain-morgan-ship-chartered-for-120-more-migrants.790556">barred from entering</a> European harbours. Others were left adrift on flimsy boats.</p>
<p>One group of 63 people was stranded at sea when their engine failed them in the Maltese Search and Rescue zone in mid-April. European authorities were informed about their distress and for days Malta, and the EU border agency Frontex, <a href="https://www.avvenire.it/attualita/pagine/malta-svelato-il-nome-del-barcone-fantasma-e-frontex-accusa-gli-stati-li-abbiamo-informati-ma-soccorsi-spettano-a-loro">observed them from the sky</a>. With no help sent, some starved to death on board and others drowned, according to <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/2020/04/16/twelve-deaths-and-a-secret-push-back-to-libya/?post_type_release_type=post">one of the survivors</a> who spoke to the activist network <a href="https://twitter.com/alarm_phone">Alarm Phone</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We shouted for help and made signs. Three people tried to swim to this big boat as it started moving away. They drowned. We made signs to the aircraft with the phones and we held the baby up to show we were in distress.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eventually, after days with no help, the Maltese authorities orchestrated a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/world/europe/migrants-malta.html">secret operation</a> to push the migrants back to Libya, carried out by a small fleet of private fishing trawlers. During their involuntary journey back to Libya, three other individuals are reported to have died, bringing the total number of <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/the-faces-and-names-of-a-migration-tragedy.788723?fbclid=IwAR2km5YE6EESadoUtMDrMlEaIUPgxjhrb3tanI-XBL0gXCNkApA9IG8-aSk">fatalities to 12</a>. </p>
<p>The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/world/press-briefing-note-migrant-rescues-mediterranean-spokesperson-un-high-commissioner">deep concern</a>, and a Maltese NGO <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/live-robert-abela-gives-press-statement.786281">triggered a criminal enquiry</a> against Malta’s prime minister, Robert Abela, over the deaths and the forced return of survivors to Libya. Responding to the accusations, Abela defended the government’s actions by alluding to its responsibility to ensure the health of “all the Maltese” through restrictions on immigration. </p>
<h2>Blame game</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of yet another catastrophic failure to prevent lives from being lost at sea, a familiar game of deflection has ensued, with EU institutions and member states rejecting responsibility. </p>
<p>Shifting blame to smuggling networks, though still a common strategy, has been complicated by revelations of Europe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/04/human-trafficker-at-meeting-italy-libya-migration-abd-al-rahman-milad">close collaborations</a> with these very networks. </p>
<p>In the past, politicians have cited the <a href="https://deathbyrescue.org/">pull-factor theory</a>, which argues that the presence of NGO rescuers off North African coasts encourages migrants to make the journey across the Mediterranean. But this theory has also lost persuasive power given the fact that migrant departures are continuing despite the current <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-crisis-hampering-mediterranean-migrant-rescues/a-53168399">absence of NGOs</a> at sea due to the coronavirus crisis.</p>
<p>Without NGO rescuers left to blame, Malta accused the EU and its member states of failing to act, insisting that the new migrant arrivals were “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-malta/malta-refuses-to-let-migrant-ship-dock-awaits-eu-deal-idUSKBN22D5ES">not Malta’s problem</a>”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/libya-why-enforcing-an-arms-embargo-is-so-hard-130254">Libya: why enforcing an arms embargo is so hard</a>
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</em>
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<h2>United in migrant deterrence</h2>
<p>These deflections of responsibility and tensions between EU member states and institutions over migration have become commonplace. And yet, in reality, Europe is largely <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20190306_managing-migration-factsheet-step-change-migration-management-border-security-timeline_en.pdf">united</a> in its efforts to militarise its border over the past five years. As I have argued in a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ips/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ips/olaa007/5818334">recent study</a>, both EU member states and institutions have worked hand-in-hand to turn Europe into a hostile environment for migrants seeking protection. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20190306_managing-migration-factsheet-step-change-migration-management-border-security-timeline_en.pdf">European Commission</a> was not wrong to state in 2019 that in matters of border security: “We have made more progress in the space of four years than was possible in the 20 years preceding them.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/01/libya-renewal-of-migration-deal-confirms-italys-complicity-in-torture-of-migrants-and-refugees/">Agreements</a> with Libyan authorities, including <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/publication/impact-eu-migration-policies-central-saharan-routes">militia groups</a>, have led to the interception of tens of thousands of people at sea, often after being spotted in the air by the <a href="https://www.operationsophia.eu/about-us/">EU operation SOPHIA</a> or by Frontex. In this way, Europe has militarised its borders in full awareness of the systematic violation of migrants’ rights in Libya, including forms of rape and torture, that have been <a href="https://www.msf.org/mediterranean-escape-route-migrants-and-refugees-trapped-libya">documented for years</a>.</p>
<p>Every theatrical plea to the EU by a member state demanding more support distracts from this reality of a rapidly militarising European border that has dramatically brought down migrant arrivals. Despite characterisations of Mediterranean migration as an ongoing crisis, <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean">data on migrant crossings</a> shows that 2020 could see the lowest number of arrivals in a decade.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-auctions-in-libya-are-the-latest-evidence-of-a-reality-for-migrants-the-eu-prefers-to-ignore-88589">Slave auctions in Libya are the latest evidence of a reality for migrants the EU prefers to ignore</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Italy and Malta’s declaration of their harbours as unsafe should not be viewed as an exceptional measure during an exceptional time but as part and parcel of continuous, and collectively European, efforts to reinforce anti-migrant deterrence measures. </p>
<p>Those languishing in Libyan torture camps or drowning off Europe’s coasts must regard deterrence in the name of “unsafe Europe” for what it is: yet another cynical way to keep them away and deprive them of safety, no matter the cost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is a member of Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Migrants have been left to die in the Mediterranean as Italy and Malta declared their harbours ‘unsafe’ in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1332782020-03-18T13:36:30Z2020-03-18T13:36:30ZSolidarity with refugees can’t survive on compassion in crisis-stricken societies of Greece and Italy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320831/original/file-20200316-27643-miuo3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C58%2C3495%2C2291&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents of the village of Thermi on Lesvos prevent the disembarkation of a boat of refugees and migrants in early March. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Orestis Panagiotou/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Encouraged by Turkey, refugees and forced migrants have once more been arriving at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tensions-mount-at-greek-border-with-turkey-amid-contested-history-of-migration-in-the-aegean-132990">Greek-Turkish border</a> in recent weeks, hoping to reach northern Europe and begin a new life. The tens of thousands who arrived were much fewer than the hundreds of thousands who passed through Greece in 2015. But they have been met with violent hostility. </p>
<p>Across the land border of the River Evros (Meric in Turkish) in eastern Greece, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/greek-villagers-enlisted-catch-migrants-turkey-border-69452257">armed vigilante</a> groups of local villagers have tried to catch potential trespassers. </p>
<p>The Greek government has responded equally harshly by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-51783410/water-cannon-and-tear-gas-at-turkish-greek-border">firing tear gas and water cannons</a> at people approaching the border. In mid-March, Turkey began to move some of the people <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/europe/turkey-greece-border-migrants.html">amassed on the border</a> back to Istanbul. </p>
<p>On the Greek islands, instead of hauling the refugee-filled boats to safety or handing out blankets, islanders from Lesvos have been preventing them from disembarking at all.</p>
<p>Yet less than five years ago, local communities across Greece and Italy joined forces with international networks of volunteers to address the most urgent needs of those arriving on European soil. As I’ve documented, this was often done in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aP_Ug11La4">a selfless and humbling manner</a>, with entire villages in <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/refugees-brought-this-small-dying-italian-village/">Italy</a> and Greece integrating refugees as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40586229/the-greek-island-where-syrian-refugees-are-welcome">contributors to local communities</a>. </p>
<p>But there is little compassion left in Greece or Italy nowadays. This is to do with two linked developments: the decline of these countries’ welfare states after the financial crisis, and the EU’s de facto abandonment of its commitment to human rights for refugee populations.</p>
<h2>Public services stretched</h2>
<p>The retrenchment of public services is a reality across Europe and the developed world, not just Greece or Italy. As my research on health and social care in England and Sweden <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01879.x">has shown</a>, securing equal access to public services according to need is no longer a priority on politicans’ agendas, making users and patients responsible for their illnesses or disabilities. Policies that have promoted liberalisation and the privatisation of the welfare state starting in the late 1980s have led to conditions of manufactured scarcity. This breeds anxiety and uncertainty in more vulnerable sections of the population who rely on it.</p>
<p>The worldwide dominance of a neoliberal policies has <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Psychoanalytic-and-Socio-Cultural-Exploration-of-a-Continent-Europe-on/Zajenkowska-Levin/p/book/9780367182779">drastically altered</a> the terms of debate on collective responsibility for the disadvantaged, affecting people’s willingness to assist them. In the aftermath of the financial crisis and austerity, refugees and migrants have often been seen as competitors for ever-decreasing public resources. This is only likely to get worse as the social and health consequences of the global coronavirus pandemic continue. </p>
<p>The current situation in Greece, which hosts growing numbers of refugees but has severely under-resourced public services, has cast this into sharp relief. The magnitude of refugees’ healthcare needs <a href="http://www.ijhpm.com/article_3611.html">would place</a> a major additional demand on the country’s stretched national health system in the event of a coronavirus outbreak <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/11/lesbos-coronavirus-case-sparks-fears-for-refugee-camp-moria">in the overcrowded and filthy camps</a>. On March 18, the Greek government <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/greece-to-restrict-migrant-camp-movements-in-virus-measure/">announced</a> it would suspend visits to the camps on the island for two weeks to stop the spread of the virus. Non-governmental organisations have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/18/ngos-raise-alarm-as-coronavirus-strips-support-from-eu-refugees">called on authorities</a> not to abandon refugees and forced migrants. </p>
<h2>Humanitarianism suspended</h2>
<p>The situation has not been helped by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/outsourcing-a-humanitarian-crisis-to-turkey-is-that-the-european-thing-to-do-55915">controversial</a> 2016 EU–Turkey deal, which is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/turkey-hopes-refugee-deal-eu-march-26-200310094525364.html">now threatened</a> by the recent tensions on the Greek-Turkish border. </p>
<p>The original plan was to send thousands of refugees back to Turkey in a deal aimed at preventing people from trying to reach the EU by sea. In exchange, Turkey would receive €6 billion (£5.3 billion) to assist the vast refugee community hosted there and Turkish nationals would be granted visa-free travel to Europe. Between 2016 to 2019 the EU has resettled more than 25,000 Syrians coming via Turkey, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/only-189-migrants-returned-to-turkey-despite-eu-refugee-pact-report/a-52153279">while less than 2,000 people were returned</a>. But the number of clandestine arrivals reaching Greek islands by sea was more than <a href="https://migration.iom.int/europe?type=arrivals">70,000 in 2019</a> alone.</p>
<p>All the same, the EU frontier countries such as Greece and Italy are increasingly being left alone to accommodate the growing number of refugees from the war in Syria as well as migrants from Africa and the Middle East. This leads to a high number of traumatised and vulnerable people subsisting in limbo in <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-refugees-arrive-on-greek-islands-amid-overcrowding-and-water-shortages-123494">substandard dwellings and makeshift tents</a> with limited or no access to healthcare or education for their children in the Greek islands. In my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14753634.2016.1238159?needAccess=true">ongoing research</a>, I’ve found that locals who helped refugees were increasingly marginalised in their communities while many islanders regretted the upheaval the arrivals brought.</p>
<h2>EU failure</h2>
<p>Despite the Greek government’s responsibility for the appalling conditions of those waiting for a response to their asylum claims, and the harsh response to the recent arrivals, above all this situation demonstrates the abject failure of European migration policy. </p>
<p>The EU governments appear unable and unwilling to take a coordinated approach to addressing the needs of refugees, fearful that populist politicians will active stoke up resentment towards “others”. This explains why the EU has turned a blind eye to <a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-auctions-in-libya-are-the-latest-evidence-of-a-reality-for-migrants-the-eu-prefers-to-ignore-88589">human rights violations in Libya</a>, another gatekeeper country receiving money to stem the flow of people crossing the Mediterranean in boats from Africa to Europe. </p>
<p>The arrival of refugees from the Middle East fleeing war and persecution has fundamentally challenged the commitment of European countries to solidarity with vulnerable people seeking protection from war and persecution, as <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html">stipulated in the Geneva Convention</a>. But anti-migration sentiment may be a form of anxiety displacement arising from the dislocation many citizens experience in European countries where public services have been decimated and the number of people in precarious employment is on the rise. </p>
<p>Policies which try to address these issues, rather than appeal to compassion for the less advantaged, will be required to restore the values of solidarity and care for all those who need it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marianna Fotaki does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Five years ago, communities in Italy and Greece volunteered to help migrants and refugees. Now that solidarity has disappeared. Why?Marianna Fotaki, Network Fellow, Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University and Professor of Business Ethics, Warwick Business School, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284452019-12-19T12:14:24Z2019-12-19T12:14:24ZHow migrants and their supporters are reviving the ethos of the 19th-century underground railroad<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses helping enslaved African-Americans to escape, has received renewed interest over recent months. The railroad was run by activists who referred to themselves as agents, conductors and station masters, and to fugitives as passengers. </p>
<p>In May 2019, the Trump administration stirred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/trump-delays-putting-harriet-tubman-on-20-bill-outrage">controversy</a> by delaying the release of the $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman, a slave turned underground railroad activist and abolitionist. In November, the film <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/movies/harriet-review.html">Harriet</a> was released, depicting the heroic struggle of the railroad’s most famous “conductor”. </p>
<p>But the underground railroad has also gained renewed attention in the context of precarious migration towards Europe and North America. <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html">Growing mass displacement</a> caused by conflict, persecution, poverty or environmental destruction has coincided with tightening visa regimes and enhanced border controls. In response, forms of support and sanctuary for those on the move have spread.</p>
<p>In North America, such <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/8/sanctuary-cities-are-new-unsaerground-railroad/">sanctuary and solidarity movements</a> have grown since the 2016 election of Donald Trump. These movements uphold the underground railroad’s tradition and ethos by promising to support and hide those threatened by deportation. Some even facilitate migrant movements across borders, at times along the trails of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees">the original underground railroad</a>.</p>
<p>In Europe, comparisons to the underground railroad have also appeared, particularly since 2015 when over a million people crossed the EU’s external borders. This prompted some to talk of the <a href="https://crimethinc.com/2017/02/13/the-syrian-underground-railroad-migrant-solidarity-organizing-in-the-modern-landscape">Syrian underground railroad</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/world/europe/france-italy-migrants-smuggling.html">French railroad “conductors”</a>, or a transnational railroad <a href="http://spheres-journal.org/disobedient-sensing-and-border-struggles-at-the-maritime-frontier-of-europe/">across the Mediterranean</a>.</p>
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<h2>Spirit of the railroad lives on</h2>
<p>In a recent journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0002764219883006">article</a>, I explored these associations between past and present forms of fugitive escape and acts of solidarity. The 19th-century underground railroad was, according to the historian <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">Eric Foner</a>, “an interlocking series of local networks”, composed of “a small, overburdened group of dedicated activists”. Much of the activism of these so-called vigilance committees was not underground at all, but, in fact, very visible – fund-raising, mobilising the public, offering legal aid and confronting slavecatchers.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-sanctuary-cities-heres-how-black-americans-protected-fugitive-slaves-72048">Before sanctuary cities, here's how black Americans protected fugitive slaves</a>
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<p>This history of solidarity with those on the move was re-activated over a century later through the sanctuary movement in the US of the 1980s. A <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-more-deaths-scott-warren-migrants-border-arizona/">network of nuns, priests and their parishioners</a> smuggled people from Central America, many of whom were fleeing US-supported death squads, into the US. </p>
<p>Today, the spirit of this activism lives on in countless ways, ranging from direct interventions along deadly borders, such as the the <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/">Mediterranean Sea</a>, the <a href="https://nomoredeaths.org/en/">Sonoran</a> desert along the US border and <a href="https://alarmephonesahara.info/en/">Saharan</a> desert in Africa, to providing <a href="https://w2eu.info/">guidance</a> to those still trying to move. It also lives on in <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/resources/bhc/series/01-04-04-01-08-01/">anti-deportation</a> and <a href="https://detention.org.uk/">anti-detention</a> campaigns, and in networks creating <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/issue/2019/135?fbclid=IwAR0sfHFlEk8hasaikadDse7sxhdyH9qYdeyjjopk4SsUZkUU9D3qn-HB2DA">sanctuary</a> spaces and cities after arrival.</p>
<h2>Denial of agency</h2>
<p>When drawing these parallels between past and present forms of escape and support for those in flight, I noticed that in many accounts, the initiative of those escaping – both historic slaves and today’s migrants – is downplayed or ignored. </p>
<p>For the most part, slave fugitives in the 19th century could expect support from activists of the underground railroad only after they had moved north and crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between slave states in the southern US and free states in the north. Retrieving slaves from the south and guiding them north, as Tubman did, was rare. For much of their journeys, slaves had to rely on their own ingenuity and strength as well as spontaneous acts of solidarity along the way, offered mostly by black people and communities not considered part of the underground railroad. </p>
<p>Similarly, the initiative of those migrating precariously today is often erased. Even in well-meaning <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12320">humanitarian accounts</a>, migrants are regularly portrayed as mere victims and denied any agency in their own migration projects. The activism and solidarity of people in the global south and diaspora communities is also erased – without their support many migrant journeys and border crossings would be even more dangerous. This means that many aspects of past and present underground railroads remain underground and unacknowledged. </p>
<p>This erasure of slave and migrant agency is also due to arguments developed by those opposed to the escape of “fugitives”. As I show in my study, both in the 19th-century US and in Europe today, those who support people on the move are blamed for causing such “illegal” movements. Back then, the phenomenon of slave runaways was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">wrongly attributed to “enticement”</a> by northerners. Slave owners accused abolitionists of instilling the idea of flight in their “human property”. </p>
<p>Today, migrant escape is also often attributed to enticement by “northerners”. For example, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists working to rescue lives in the Mediterranean Sea are often <a href="https://blamingtherescuers.org/">wrongly constructed as a pull factor</a> that encourages people to make the journey. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean-75086">NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean</a>
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<p>Politicians such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and a former deputy prime minister, have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2018/06/malta-responsible-lifeline-boat-denied-italy-180622154705983.html">derided NGOs</a> for supposedly profiting from “loading this valuable cargo of humans – of human flesh – on board”. The country’s former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/opinion/matteo-renzi-helping-the-migrants-is-everyones-duty.html?_r=2">depicted</a> migrant smugglers as “the slave traders of the 21st century”. Through these accounts, European politicians have sought to justify militarising the Mediterranean Sea and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/mediterranean-battlefield-migration/">sending tens of thousands of migrants</a> back to Libya, where their <a href="https://theconversation.com/migrants-calling-us-in-distress-from-the-mediterranean-returned-to-libya-by-deadly-refoulement-industry-111219">lives are in danger</a>. </p>
<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad and the countless acts of escape and solidarity it symbolises serves as a reminder today that migrants, too, are seeking freedom, acting on their own needs and desires. At the same time, countless acts of solidarity along the way and forms of sanctuary upon arrival show that the ethos of the underground railroad lives on, even at a time when borders and social divisions seem to emerge all around us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a member of the network Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Both in 19th-century America and today, the initiative and choices of those making the journey are often ignored.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1199182019-08-16T09:54:26Z2019-08-16T09:54:26ZLibya: ongoing atrocities reveal the trouble with international military intervention<p>It’s been eight years since the NATO-led military intervention in Libya. Many analysts <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0163660X.2013.791082">consider</a> the action a crucial <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704119.001.0001/acprof-9780198704119">step forward</a> in protecting civilians from looming atrocity. But today, Libya stands further from peace than ever. </p>
<p>Since April 2019, battles between the UN-sponsored Government of National Accord (GNA) and General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army have raged in Tripoli. By the end of July, an estimated <a href="https://unsmil.unmissions.org/remarks-srsg-ghassan-salam%C3%A9-united-nations-security-council-situation-libya-29-july-2019">1,100 people had been killed</a> and a further 104,000 displaced.</p>
<p>In early July, an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/world/middleeast/libya-airstrike-migrants-tripoli.html?module=inline">airstrike</a> on Tajoura migrant detention centre near the Libyan capital Tripoli reportedly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-migrants/bombed-tripoli-migrant-detention-center-being-emptied-un-idUSKCN1U511O">killed</a> more than 50 civilians and injured 130. When a strike landed close to the centre just six weeks before, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/libya-evidence-of-possible-war-crimes-underscores-need-for-international-investigation/?utm_source=TWITTER-IS&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2312753948&utm_campaign=Amnesty&utm_term=News">Amnesty International warned</a> of the dangers faced by detainees. Their warnings were ignored and 610 migrants were trapped in Tajoura when a bomb struck. <a href="https://www.msf.org.uk/article/libya-after-airstrike-tajoura-detention-centre-britain-must-act">According to</a> one doctor working for Médecins Sans Frontières, there were “bodies everywhere, and body parts sticking out from under the rubble”. </p>
<p>As our <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/just-war-and-the-responsibility-to-protect/forthcoming/">new book</a> chronicles, today’s battle for Tripoli is the latest in a long line of horrors. Post-intervention Libya has faced <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/11902.htm">political and economic collapse</a>, with 7,578 violent deaths <a href="https://ucdp.uu.se/#country/620">recorded</a> between 2012 and 2018. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and weapons have spread across the region. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/libya-conflict-boils-down-to-the-man-driving-the-war-khalifa-haftar-115192">Libya conflict boils down to the man driving the war -- Khalifa Haftar</a>
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<p>While spectacular acts of violence dominate headlines, the horrors facing civilians in Libya are routine and every day. Migrants are left to die from treatable illness in <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2019/06/07/libya-migrant-detention-conditions/">awful</a> detention centres. <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/libya-strike-refugee-unhcr-tripoli-triq-al-sikka-italy-a9004961.html">One migrant in Libya</a>, writing anonymously for The Independent, said: “We panic every day, we are dying slowly, because of too much depression and starvation.”</p>
<p>Back in late November 2017, the European Union’s migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/eu-working-without-letup-to-help-migrants-in-libya/">said</a> he was, “conscious of the appalling and degrading conditions in which some migrants are held in Libya”. And yet, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/libya-attack-revives-calls-closing-migrant-detention-centres-190703193641392.html">extreme human rights abuses</a> are still being <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23337486.2017.1375624">actively enabled by European policies</a>. </p>
<p>Humanitarian rescue missions have been criminalised, leaving people to <a href="http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/campaigns/refugee-campaign/fortress-europe/">drown in the Mediterranean</a>. Migrants captured at sea are sent back to detention centres, including 90 who were <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/libya-immigrants-detention-tajoura-centre-jeremy-hunt-airstrike-a9010821.html">forced to return to Tajoura mere days after the airstrike</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-sued-at-international-criminal-court-over-mediterranean-migration-policy-as-more-die-at-sea-118223">EU sued at International Criminal Court over Mediterranean migration policy – as more die at sea</a>
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<h2>Fuelling more violence</h2>
<p>Ghassam Salame, special representative of the UN Secretary-General and head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/07/1043381">reports</a> that “external support has been instrumental in the intensification of airstrikes”.</p>
<p>The UN is currently investigating <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/libya-uae-weapons-arms-embargo-khalifa-haftar-tripoli-a8872606.html">allegations</a> that the United Arab Emirates has supplied Haftar with weapons in violation of a UN arms embargo, and <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190712-libya-demands-answers-french-javelin-missiles-found-haftar-base">French weapons</a> have been found at a Haftar base. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-sold-equipment-libya-erdogan-confirms">Turkey</a> is providing weapons to fighters from the GNA.</p>
<p>The G7 and the UN have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47835553">condemned the violence</a> in Libya. In practice, however, the actions of some of their members fuel the killing and prevent co-ordinated diplomatic action.</p>
<p>It’s often <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/glogo22&div=35&id=&page">argued</a> that Libya shows the need for more robust post-intervention planning of humanitarian military interventions. This is misleading. Instead, the situation highlights the need for new thinking on civilian protection. </p>
<p>The question of intervention usually emerges at that dramatic moment when civilians are at risk of extreme violence. Often brushed aside is the every day atrocity of the kind seen in Libya today: civilians at risk of starvation, death through treatable illness and killing at the hands of callous policies. This is not only an atrocity in its own right. As <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/just-war-and-the-responsibility-to-protect/forthcoming/">our research</a> shows, it also creates an ideal habitat for mass atrocity crimes including genocide and ethnic cleansing. Instead of calling for military action when atrocity crimes occur, our focus should shift towards addressing the injustices that help create them. </p>
<p>Also forgotten is the role the international community plays in fuelling conflict through stoking division and selling arms. France provided Rwanda with <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/indefensible">weapons</a> used to commit genocide in 1994. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/world/africa/rwanda-france-genocide.html">Claims</a> that France also provided military training for perpetrators are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/05/macron-asks-experts-investigate-french-role-rwandan-genocide">under investigation</a> by a French commission of experts. US and UK arms are being used <a href="https://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/stop-arming-saudi/a-shameful-relationship.pdf">against Yemeni civilians</a>. Moreover, members of the international community have <a href="https://theconversation.com/syria-whos-involved-and-what-do-they-want-95002">supported different sides</a> in the Syrian civil war. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-british-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia-ruled-unlawful-what-this-means-for-the-future-119205">Why British arms sales to Saudi Arabia ruled unlawful – what this means for the future</a>
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<h2>Other options</h2>
<p>Events in Libya show what can happen when international players claim to do good things through military action. To prevent future atrocities, the international community must recognise the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354066119842208?fbclid=IwAR0l6h8Ge47K5nTY3pG2AEZdbRXVq0U7vW1bBmKzF6blDjjTGNX5wJR_vkM&journalCode=ejta">absurdity</a> of dropping bombs to protect people while also detaining migrants in the centre of war zones, dealing arms, and preventing rescue missions.</p>
<p>Military intervention does not protect civilians. We should call on the international community to change their callous policies that kill every day. We should demand that they stop fuelling atrocity crimes. And we should support non-violent forms of protection such as unarmed civilian peacekeeping, which have proven effective in <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ea02/9ccdf88b9147819ed59b25a0a3438b14e17c.pdf">Colombia, South Sudan, Kosovo</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Security-Without-Weapons-Rethinking-violence-nonviolent-action-and-civilian/Wallace/p/book/9781138944862">Sri Lanka</a>. </p>
<p>To support military intervention gives further licence to the militarism of those already fanning the flames of atrocity. This will only result in more of the violence seen in Libya today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119918/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The NATO-led military intervention in Libya has just fuelled more violence.Michael Neu, Senior Lectuer in Politics, Philosophy and Ethics, University of BrightonRobin Dunford, Principal Lecturer in Globalisation and War, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1208512019-07-26T09:37:11Z2019-07-26T09:37:11ZMigration in the Mediterranean: why it’s time to put European leaders on trial<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285539/original/file-20190724-110179-1h19eso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the NGO 'SOS Mediterranee' during the rescue of more than 250 migrants on a wooden boat off the Libyan coast.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Christophe Petit Tesson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In June this year two lawyers filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) naming European Union member states’ migration policies in the Mediterranean as crimes against humanity. </p>
<p>The court’s Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, must decide whether she wants to open a preliminary investigation into the criminality of Europe’s treatment of migrants. </p>
<p>The challenge against the EU’s Mediterranean migrant policy is set out in a 245-page document prepared by Juan Branco and Omer Shatz, two lawyer-activists working and teaching in Paris. They <a href="https://www.statewatch.org/news/2019/jun/eu-icc-case-EU-Migration-Policies.pdf">argue that EU migration policy</a> is founded in deterrence and that drowned migrants are a deliberate element of this policy. The international law that they allege has been violated – crimes against humanity – applies to state policies practiced even outside of armed conflict. </p>
<p>Doctrinally and juridically, the ICC can proceed. The question that remains is political: can and should the ICC come after its founders on their own turf?</p>
<p>There are two reasons why the answer is emphatically yes. First, the complaint addresses what has become a rights impasse in the EU. By taking on an area stymying other supranational courts, the ICC can fulfil its role as a judicial institution of last resort. Second, by turning its sights on its founders (and funders), the ICC can redress the charges of neocolonialism in and around Africa that have dogged it for the past decade.</p>
<h2>ICC legitimacy</h2>
<p>The ICC is the world’s first permanent international criminal court. Founded in 2002, it currently has 122 member states. </p>
<p>So far, it has only prosecuted Africans. This has led to persistent critiques that it is a neocolonial institution that “only chases Africans” and only tries rebels. In turn, this has led to pushback against the court from powerful actors like the African Union, which <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/african-union-resolution-urges-states-to-leave-icc/">urges its members to leave the court</a>. </p>
<p>The first departure from the court occurred in 2017, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/africa/burundi-international-criminal-court.html">Burundi left</a>. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/world/asia/philippines-international-criminal-court.html">Philippines</a> followed suit in March of this year. Both countries are currently under investigation by the ICC for state sponsored atrocities. <a href="https://justiceinconflict.org/2018/09/10/a-graceful-exit-for-south-africas-icc-withdrawal-plans/">South Africa threatened withdrawal</a>, but this seems to have blown over.</p>
<p>In this climate, many cheered the news of the ICC Prosecutor’s <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/23/afghanistan-icc-abandons-field">2017 request to investigate</a> crimes committed in Afghanistan. As a member of the ICC, Afghanistan is within the ICC’s jurisdiction. The investigation included atrocities committed by the Taliban and foreign military forces active in Afghanistan, including members of the US armed forces. </p>
<p>The US, which is not a member of the ICC, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law">violently opposes</a> any possibility that its military personnel might be caught up in ICC charges. In <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1448">April 2019</a> the ICC announced that a pre-trial chamber had shut down the investigation because US opposition made ICC action impossible. </p>
<p>Court watchers <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/23/afghanistan-icc-abandons-field">reacted with frustration and disgust</a>.</p>
<h2>EU migration</h2>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/the-list-europe-migrant-bodycount">30,000 migrants have drowned</a> in the Mediterranean in the past three decades. International attention was drawn to their plight during the migration surge of 2015, when the image of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/31/alan-kurdi-death-canada-refugee-policy-syria-boy-beach-turkey-photo">3-year-old Alan Kurdi</a> face-down on a Turkish beach circulated the globe. More than one million people entered Europe that year. This led the EU and its member states to close land and sea borders in the east by erecting fences and completing a Euro 3 billion deal with Turkey to keep migrants there. NATO ships were posted in the Aegean to catch and return migrants. </p>
<p>Migrant-saving projects, such as the Italian Mare Nostrum programme that <a href="https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/548713624.pdf">collected 150,000 migrants in 2013-2014</a>, were replaced by border guarding projects. Political pressure designed to reduce the number of migrants who made it to European shores led to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/12/migrant-rescue-ships-mediterranean">revocation and non-renewal of licenses</a> for boats registered to NGOs whose purpose was to rescue migrants at sea. This has led to the current situation, where <a href="https://qz.com/1639293/only-one-refugee-rescue-boat-operated-by-aid-groups-remains-in-the-mediterranean-sea/">there is only one boat patrolling</a> the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>The EU has handed search and rescue duties over to the Libyan coast guard, which has been accused repeatedly of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jan/21/eu-support-for-libya-contributes-to-extreme-abuse-of-refugees-human-rights-watch-study">atrocities against migrants</a>. European countries now negotiate Mediterranean migrant reception on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/23/eu-countries-agree-plan-to-handle-migrants-and-refugees">a case-by-case basis</a>.</p>
<h2>A rights impasse</h2>
<p>International and supranational law applies to migrants, but so far it has inadequately protected them. The <a href="https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf">law of the sea</a> mandates that ships collect people in need. A series of refusals to allow ships to disembark collected migrants has <a href="https://www.jus.uio.no/nifs/english/research/projects/oslos/events/seminars/2018-11-14-migration.html">imperilled this international doctrine</a>. </p>
<p>In the EU, the <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/PERI/2017/600414/IPOL_PERI(2017)600414_EN.pdf">Court of Justice</a> oversees migration and refugee policies. Such oversight now includes a two-year-old deal with Libya that some claim is tantamount to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/05/eu-deal-libya-refugees-libyan-detention-centres">sentencing migrants to death</a>.” </p>
<p>For its part, the European Court of Human Rights has established itself as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-european-court-of-human-rights-is-no-friend-to-migrants-42129">no friend to migrants</a>.” Although the court’s 2012 decision in <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/02/italy-historic-european-court-judgment-upholds-migrants-rights/">Hirsi</a> was celebrated for a progressive stance regarding the rights of migrants at sea, it is unclear <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/emil/20/4/article-p396_3.xml?lang=en">how expansively that ruling applies</a>.</p>
<p>European courts <a href="https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng-press#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22003-6443361-8477507%22%5D%7D">are being invoked</a> and making rulings, yet the journey for migrants has only grown more desperate and deadly over the past few years. Existing European mechanisms, policies, and international rights commitments are not producing change. </p>
<p>In this rights impasse, the introduction of a new legal paradigm is essential. </p>
<h2>Fulfilling its role</h2>
<p>A foundational element of ICC procedure is complementarity. This holds that the court only intervenes when states cannot or will not act on their own. </p>
<p>Complementarity has played an unexpectedly central role in the cases before the ICC to date, as African states have self-referred defendants claiming that they do not have the resources to try them themselves. This has greatly contributed to the ICC’s political failure in Africa, as rights-abusing governments have handed over political adversaries to the ICC for prosecution in bad faith, enjoying the benefits of a domestic political sphere relieved of these adversaries while <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo47223014.html">simultaneously complaining of ICC meddling in domestic affairs</a>.</p>
<p>This isn’t how complementarity was supposed to work. </p>
<p>The present rights impasse in the EU regarding migration showcases what complementarity was intended to do – granting sovereign states primacy over law enforcement and stepping in only when states both violate humanitarian law and refuse to act. The past decade of deadly migration coupled with a deliberately wastrel refugee policy in Europe qualifies as just such a situation.</p>
<p>Would-be migrants don’t vote and cannot garner political representation in the EU. This leaves only human rights norms, and the international commitments in which they are enshrined, to protect them. These norms are not being enforced, in part because questions of citizenship and border security have remained largely the domain of sovereign states. Those policies are resulting in an ongoing crime against humanity. </p>
<p>The ICC may be the only institution capable of breaking the current impasse by threatening to bring Europe’s leaders to criminal account. This is the work of last resort for which international criminal law is designed. The ICC should embrace the progressive ideals that drove its construction, and engage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerstin Carlson receives funding from The Dreyer's Fund for research on international criminal justice in Africa. </span></em></p>The ICC may be the only institution capable of breaking the current legal impasse.Kerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1196702019-07-01T15:44:16Z2019-07-01T15:44:16ZSea-Watch 3 captain arrested: EU complicit in criminalising search and rescue in the Mediterranean<p>Carola Rackete, captain of the <a href="https://sea-watch.org/en/project/sea-watch-3/">Sea-Watch 3</a>, was <a href="https://www.independent.ie/world-news/aid-ship-captain-arrested-after-migrants-step-on-to-italian-island-38264658.html">arrested</a> on June 29 for docking the search and rescue vessel in Italy without permission. This is the latest confrontation in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/crew-of-ngo-ship-grounded-in-malta-sound-alarm-as-search-and-rescue-co-operation-founders-in-mediterranean-99308">longer battle</a> launched by the Italian government against non-governmental organisations who rescue people in distress in the central Mediterranean.</p>
<p>In early June, Italy passed a decree that puts vessels such as Sea-Watch 3, which is owned by the German NGO Sea-Watch, at risk of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/italy-adopts-decree-that-could-fine-migrant-rescue-ngo-aid-up-to-50000">up to €50,000</a> in fines for bringing people rescued at sea to Italian ports. This followed a decree in December 2018 which abolished humanitarian protection for those arriving to Italy and led to many being <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-eu-stresses-the-migration-crisis-is-over-italy-makes-hundreds-of-migrants-homeless-113137">made homeless</a>.</p>
<p>The situation for those providing search and rescue in the Mediterranean is getting persistently more difficult. On June 26, the European Court of Human Rights <a href="https://euobserver.com/tickers/145268">refused a request from Sea-Watch 3</a> to disembark migrants in Italy. With 40 traumatised people as well as the crew remaining on board since a rescue at sea on June 12, Rackete decided that enough was enough and it was time to take matters into her own hands. She entered the port of Lampedusa on June 29 without permission, trapping a patrol boat in the process, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/30/italy-refugee-rescue-boat-captain-carola-rackete-defends-decision">she later said she’d</a> apologised for. Rakete was subsequently arrested.</p>
<p>Despite knowing that she would be at risk of arrest, and despite knowing that the ship would also be at risk of seizure, Sea-Watch made a <a href="https://www.independent.ie/world-news/aid-ship-captain-arrested-after-migrants-step-on-to-italian-island-38264658.html">statement</a> stressing that Rackete “enforced the rights of the rescued people to be disembarked to a place of safety”. There has been a groundswell of support for Rackete since her arrest, including from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier who criticised Italy for dealing with the situation in terms that were <a href="https://euobserver.com/justice/145309">“unbecoming” of an EU member state</a>. </p>
<p>While it may seem that far-right politicians in Italy are driving the criminalisation of people on the move along with those seeking to support them, the problem is actually more far-reaching. It isn’t only in Italy where activists are being criminalised, but also in <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2018/09/08/eu-migrants-libya/">Greece</a> and elsewhere, as hostile policy environments impede civil society groups from providing support to those seeking peace and safety. It is a 2002 EU <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32002L0090">council directive</a> that provides a legal framework for prosecuting those who facilitate the unauthorised entry, transit and residence of people travelling to the EU.</p>
<p>In 2018, <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/06/20/european-activists-fight-criminalisation-aid-migrants-refugees">at least 104</a> people across the EU were investigated or formally prosecuted for providing people on the move with humanitarian assistance. A <a href="http://www.resoma.eu/sites/resoma/resoma/files/policy_brief/pdf/Final%20Synthetic%20Report%20-%20Crackdown%20on%20NGOs%20and%20volunteers%20helping%20refugees%20and%20other%20migrants_1.pdf">recent study</a> highlighted various ways in which solidarity groups are policed in order to prevent their support for those migrating. This ranges from anti-smuggling operations through to restraining orders designed to prevent activists travelling to sites in which they can provide people with support. In Hungary, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/hungary-passes-anti-immigrant-stop-soros-laws">legislative package</a> passed in 2018 renders those providing support to people seeking to claim asylum at risk of prison. </p>
<h2>Italy left unchallenged</h2>
<p>While the European Commission took <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/future-eu/news/eu-raps-hungary-for-stop-soros-law-steps-up-legal-battle/">legal action</a> to challenge Hungary’s policy, Italy’s actions have remained largely unchallenged by EU authorities so far. In the summer of 2017, Italy began plans to impose a <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/138656">code of conduct</a> on search and rescue vessels. Despite the controversy that this raised, the EU supported Italy’s actions. When Italy decided to renew its “<a href="https://www.thelocal.it/20180708/libya-and-italy-agree-to-reactivate-friendship-treaty-to-quell-migration">friendship”</a> with Libya in the summer of 2018, enabling joint action on migration, again the EU lent its support. At the time, the EU was actually already pursuing a programme to <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/eu-to-step-up-training-of-libya-coastguards-on-migrant-patrols/">train Libya’s coastguard</a>.</p>
<p>The EU’s inaction in the face of Italy’s increasingly hostile agenda ultimately amounts to complicity with the arrest of search and rescue activists such as Rackete. The EU priority is to advance a policy agenda that prevents people on the move from arriving in the EU – regardless of where they end up. Yet as Giorgia Linardi, a legal expert working with Sea-Watch <a href="https://www.eubulletin.com/10035-migrant-crisis-italys-new-bill-to-penalise-ngos-for-rescuing-migrants.html">argues</a>: “Libya is not a safe country.” It’s for this reason that Sea-Watch maintains that rescue at sea must be “<a href="https://theglobepost.com/2019/05/29/search-rescue-mediterranean/">protected and defended</a>”, and that Linardi <a href="https://www.eubulletin.com/10035-migrant-crisis-italys-new-bill-to-penalise-ngos-for-rescuing-migrants.html">affirms</a>: “Forcibly taking rescued people back to a war-torn country, having them imprisoned and tortured, is a crime that we will never commit.”</p>
<p>Italy’s actions create a difficult situation for the EU and its member states, who are under increased pressure to accept those people who search and rescue groups rescue at sea. Yet as UN human rights experts <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24628&LangID=E">stressed</a> in their condemnation of Italy’s bill to fine search and rescue vessels: “The right to life and the principle of non-refoulement (not sending people back) should always prevail over national legislation or other measures purportedly adopted in the name of national security.” </p>
<p>It is high time that EU leaders spoke out collectively against the persecution of activists such as Rackete in recognition of the importance of international legal obligations such as Article 98 of the <a href="https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf">UN Convention on the Law of the Sea</a>. She is <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-boat-captain-pia-klemp-faces-prison-in-italy-for-migrant-rescues/a-49112348">not the first</a> captain of a civil society vessel facing prison. The EU must not continue supporting a situation in which people are at risk of imprisonment for operating vessels under the belief that they have a rightful duty to help any person in danger at sea.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Squire receives funding from the British Academy, and has undertaken research on migration in the Mediterranean funded by UK Economic and Social Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>Carola Rackete, captain of an NGO search and rescue ship, was arrested by Italian authorities when landing in Italy. She isn’t the first to be criminalised for trying to save people at sea.Vicki Squire, Professor of International Politics, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1182232019-06-04T09:29:01Z2019-06-04T09:29:01ZEU sued at International Criminal Court over Mediterranean migration policy – as more die at sea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277700/original/file-20190603-69095-1nx66wz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migrant boat spotted by Moonbird aircraft on May 29 in the Mediterranean. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/seawatch_intl/status/1133709652452085761">Moonbird/Sea-Watch</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the same week that more migrant lives were lost at sea, the EU’s migration policy in the Mediterranean has been brought to the attention of the International Criminal Court (ICC). </p>
<p>It emerged on June 3 that the ICC had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/03/icc-submission-calls-for-prosecution-of-eu-over-migrant-deaths?fbclid=IwAR0pdLEwZvOZJGOgbFXbXbUHte-n3ZJv5CEWsfIOTDvl5G4OjO51GyKccwU">received a legal submission</a> calling for the EU and some of its member states to face prosecution for enacting migration policies “intended to sacrifice the lives of migrants in distress at sea”. </p>
<p>The sharply worded <a href="https://twitter.com/anatolium/status/1135373067050504192">submission</a> was brought by international lawyers who have asked the ICC to open an investigation into EU migration policies and whether a prosecution could be mounted under international law. </p>
<p>The lawyers assessed European migration policies in the Mediterranean over recent years, paying particular attention to the end of Italy’s military-humanitarian <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-was-italys-flagship-immigration-project-a-failure-38128">rescue operation Mare Nostrum in 2014</a> and the subsequent shift to policies focused on deterrence. Their submission claims that this shift toward deterring migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to reach the EU resulted in:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(i) the deaths by drowning of thousands of migrants, ii) the refoulement of tens of thousands of migrants attempting to flee Libya, and iii) complicity in the subsequent crimes of deportation, murder, imprisonment, enslavement, torture, rape, persecution and other inhuman acts, taking place in Libyan detention camps and torture houses.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to the ICC submission, these “crimes against humanity” were consciously perpetrated by the EU and member states in the belief that sacrificing migrant lives at sea would stop other migrants from making risky voyages across the Mediterranean. </p>
<h2>Sending migrants back to Libya</h2>
<p>The authors assert that European authorities have “channeled their policies” of deterrence through the so-called Libyan coastguard. Interceptions of migrant boats by the Libyan authorities have resulted in tens of thousands of people being sent back, or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/07/handing-back-asylum-seekers-is-called-refoulement-and-its-illegal">refouled</a>, to Libya in recent years – and my research is showing they are increasingly being co-ordinated by Italian and EU authorities from the air. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/migrants-calling-us-in-distress-from-the-mediterranean-returned-to-libya-by-deadly-refoulement-industry-111219">Migrants calling us in distress from the Mediterranean returned to Libya by deadly 'refoulement' industry</a>
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<p>I’ve have been told by people working for NGO search and research organisations, that a greater presence of European helicopters and aeroplanes patrolling the Mediterranean, for example those of the EU military operation <a href="https://www.operationsophia.eu/">Eunavfor Med</a>, have been observed over the Mediterranean in the last few months. These aircraft have <a href="https://mediterranearescue.org/en/news-en/breaking-news-from-mare-jonio-engaged-in-patrolling-and-monitoring-operations-in-the-central-mediterranean/">reportedly</a> informed the Libyan coastguard about the whereabouts of migrants boats so that they can intercept them.</p>
<p>This increased aerial involvement of Eunavfor Med aircraft and helicopters stems from a <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2019/03/29/eunavfor-med-operation-sophia-mandate-extended-until-30-september-2019/">European Council decision</a> in late March 2019 to suspend the deployment of the operation’s ships, but strengthen surveillance by air and reinforce its support for the Libyan coastguard.</p>
<p>The result is that migrants are being forcibly returned to Libya, an <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/5/5ceff1144/unhcr-evacuates-hundreds-vulnerable-refugees-libya-safety.html">active war-zone</a>, where they are held in inhumane detention camps. NGOs have <a href="https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/images/zdocs/Libya-Italy-Report-03-2019.pdf">documented</a> that many migrants have been exposed to systematic forms of torture, sexual violence, and extortion at these camps. </p>
<p>The submission to the ICC highlights clearly what migrants and their supporters continue to experience and witness on a daily basis: the violent consequences of European border and security policies that have turned the Mediterranean Sea into <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants/mediterranean-by-far-worlds-deadliest-border-for-migrants-iom-idUSKBN1DO1ZY">the deadliest border in the world</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/03/icc-submission-calls-for-prosecution-of-eu-over-migrant-deaths?fbclid=IwAR0pdLEwZvOZJGOgbFXbXbUHte-n3ZJv5CEWsfIOTDvl5G4OjO51GyKccwU">response</a> to the ICC submission, an EU spokesperson highlighted the EU’s respect for human rights and international and European conventions, emphasising that its: “Priority has always been and will continue to be protecting lives and ensuring humane and dignified treatment of everyone throughout the migratory routes”. But the reality at sea is a different one – European non-assistance has become routine in the Mediterranean.</p>
<h2>Spotted from the air</h2>
<p>On June 2, a shipwreck occurred off the coast of Libya leaving <a href="https://twitter.com/UNHCRLibya/status/1135169570111725574">dozens of people presumed dead</a>. This will further raise the Mediterranean death toll that has surpassed <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean">500 fatalities in 2019 already</a>, despite a dramatic decrease in migrant crossings. On the same day, the survivors of another Mediterranean voyage <a href="https://www.ilsecoloxix.it/genova/2019/06/02/news/nave-migranti-il-pattugliatore-fulgosi-e-a-tre-miglia-dal-porto-di-genova-1.33333192?refresh_ce">testified</a> after <a href="https://www.apnews.com/0fbbf1cf461e4f7d865b0918ee0c2709">disembarking in Genoa</a>, that they had lost travel companions at sea – despite the fact that Italian and other authorities had been alerted to their odyssey and were monitoring it. </p>
<p>After spotting the migrant boat with about 100 people on board on May 29 and relaying their distress, the civil reconnaissance aircraft <a href="https://twitter.com/seawatch_intl/status/1133709652452085761">Moonbird</a>, run by the NGO Sea-Watch, observed that the Italian navy vessel P490 didn’t carry out a rescue operation despite being in the vicinity of the boat in distress. In the evening that day, the <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/">Alarm Phone</a>, an activist hotline supporting migrants in distress at sea, of which I am a member, was also alerted to this boat. </p>
<p>Despite raising awareness about the emergency situation in <a href="https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1135184910044602368">public</a> and directly with European coastguards, it took nearly a day until a rescue operation was launched. Because of this delay, the migrants, including many children, had to endure a second night at sea. </p>
<p>The daily dramas in the Mediterranean are not the result of a lack of European engagement at sea. As the <a href="https://twitter.com/anatolium/status/1135373067050504192">submission to the ICC</a> highlights, they are the consequence of European migration policies that have actively “turned the central Mediterranean to the world’s deadliest migration route.”</p>
<p>Decades of research has shown that the unabated criminalisation of migration has <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Migrant-Resistance-in-Contemporary-Europe/Stierl/p/book/9781138576230">led to an increase</a> in migrant fatalities around the world as those seeking to escape by crossing borders have had to revert to longer, more expensive, and more dangerous migration routes. Those dying in the Mediterranean today are the inevitable result of Europe “protecting” its borders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a member of the network Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Lawyers ask ICC to investigate EU over its policy of deterring migrants from crossing the Mediterrean, the world’s deadliest border.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1112192019-02-07T12:05:35Z2019-02-07T12:05:35ZMigrants calling us in distress from the Mediterranean returned to Libya by deadly ‘refoulement’ industry<p>When they called us from the sea, the 106 precarious travellers referred to their boat <a href="http://watchthemed.net/reports/view/1133">as a white balloon</a>. This balloon, or rubber dinghy, was meant to carry them all the way to safety in Europe. The people on board – many men, about 20 women, and 12 children from central, west and north Africa – had left Khoms in Libya a day earlier, on the evening of January 19. </p>
<p>Though they survived the night at sea, many of passengers on the boat were unwell, seasick and freezing. They decided to call for help and used their satellite phone at approximately 11am the next day. They reached out to the <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/">Alarm Phone</a>, a hotline operated by international activists situated in Europe and Africa, that can be called by migrants in distress at sea. Alongside my work as a researcher on migration and borders, I am also a member of this activist network, and on that day I supported our shift team who received and documented the direct calls from the people on the boat in distress.</p>
<p>The boat had been trying to get as far away as possible from the Libyan coast. Only then would the passengers stand a chance of escaping Libya’s coastguard. The European Union and Italy <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41983063">struck a deal</a> in 2017 to train the Libyan coastguard in return for them stopping migrants reaching European shores. But a 2017 report by Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/12/libya-european-governments-complicit-in-horrific-abuse-of-refugees-and-migrants/">highlighted</a> how the Libyan authorities operate in collusion with smuggling networks. Time and again, media reports suggest they have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/26/opinion/europe-migrant-crisis-mediterranean-libya.html">drastically violated</a> the human rights of escaping migrants as well as the laws of the sea.</p>
<p>The migrant travellers knew that if they were detected and caught, they would be abducted back to Libya, or illegally “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/07/handing-back-asylum-seekers-is-called-refoulement-and-its-illegal">refouled</a>”. But Libya is a dangerous place for migrants in transit – as well as for Libyan nationals – given the <a href="https://www.ecfr.eu/mena/mapping_libya_conflict">ongoing civil conflict</a> between several warring factions. In all likelihood, being sent back to Libya would mean being sent to detention centres described as “concentration-camp like” by <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/libyan-trafficking-camps-are-hell-for-refugees-diplomats-say/a-37318459">German diplomats</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-auctions-in-libya-are-the-latest-evidence-of-a-reality-for-migrants-the-eu-prefers-to-ignore-88589">Slave auctions in Libya are the latest evidence of a reality for migrants the EU prefers to ignore</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The odds of reaching Europe were stacked against the people on the boat. Over the past year, the European-Libyan collaboration in containing migrants in North Africa, a research focus of mine, has resulted in a decrease of sea arrivals in Italy – from about 119,000 in 2017 to <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean">23,000 in 2018</a>. Precisely how many people were intercepted by the Libyan coastguards last year is unclear but the Libyan authorities have put the figure at <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-un/libyan-coast-guard-says-it-has-intercepted-15000-migrants-in-2018-idUKKCN1OJ273">around 15,000</a>. The fact that this refoulement industry has led to a decrease in the number of migrant crossings in the central Mediterranean means that fewer people have been able to escape grave human rights violations and reach a place of safety. </p>
<h2>Shifting responsibility</h2>
<p>In repeated conversations, the 106 people on the boat made clear to the Alarm Phone activists that they would rather move on and endanger their lives by continuing to Europe than be returned by the Libyan coastguards. The activists stayed in touch with them, and for transparency reasons, the distress situation was made public via <a href="https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1086963418073055232">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1086963418073055232"}"></div></p>
<p>Around noon, the situation on board deteriorated markedly and anxiety spread. With weather conditions worsening and after a boy had fallen unconscious, the people on the boat expressed for the first time their immediate fear of dying at sea and demanded Alarm Phone to alert all available authorities. </p>
<p>The activists swiftly notified the Italian coastguards. But both the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, and in turn the Maltese authorities, suggested it was the Libyan coastguard’s responsibility to handle the distress call. And yet, eight different phone numbers of the Libyan coastguards could not be reached by the activists. </p>
<p>In the afternoon, the situation had come across the radar of the <a href="https://www.corriere.it/cronache/19_gennaio_20/gelo-vento-onde-alte-mezzo-metrovi-supplico-non-portateci-indietro-61b2b5cc-1cfd-11e9-abf6-3879de3c5581.shtml">Italian media</a>. When the Alarm Phone activists informed the people on board that the public had also been made aware of the situation by the media one person succinctly responded: “I don’t need to be on the news, I need to be rescued.”</p>
<p>And yet media attention catapulted the story into the highest political spheres in Italy. According to a report in the Italian national <a href="https://www.corriere.it/cronache/19_gennaio_22/migranti-niente-vittime-filo-diretto-conte-007-nuove-risorse-trattare-la-libia-0a9cb828-1dc0-11e9-bb3d-4c552f39c07c.shtml">newspaper Corriere della Sera</a>, the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, took charge of the situation, stating that the fate of the migrant boat could not be left to Alarm Phone activists. Conte instructed the Italian foreign intelligence service to launch rapid negotiations with the Libyan coastguards. It took some time to persuade them, but eventually, the Libyans were convinced to take action. </p>
<p>In the meantime, the precarious passengers on the boat reported of water leaking into their boat, of the freezing cold, and their fear of drowning. The last time the Alarm Phone reached them, around 8pm, they could see a plane in the distance but were unable to forward their GPS coordinates to the Alarm Phone due to the failing battery of their satellite phone. </p>
<h2>Sent back to Libya</h2>
<p>About three hours later, the Italian coastguards issued a <a href="http://www.veritasnews24.it/index.php/component/content/article/98-italia/3847-guardia-costiera-barcone-con-migranti-in-avaria-soccorsi-da-un-mercantile-chiamato-dalla-libia.html?Itemid=437">press release</a>: the Libyans had assumed responsibility and co-ordinated the rescue of several boats. According to the press release, a merchant vessel had rescued the boat and the 106 people would be returned to Libya. </p>
<p>According to the survivors and <a href="https://www.msf.org.uk/article/libya-migrants-and-refugees-returned-overcrowded-detention-centres">Médecins Sans Frontières</a> who treated them on arrival, at least six people appeared to have drowned during the voyage – presumably after the Alarm Phone lost contact with them. Another boy died after disembarkation.</p>
<p>A day later, on January 21, members of a second group of 144 people <a href="http://watchthemed.net/reports/view/1135">called the Alarm Phone</a> from another merchant vessel. Just like the first group, they had been refouled to Libya, but they were still on board. Some still believed that they would be brought to Europe. </p>
<p>Speaking on the phone with the activists, they could see land but it was not European but Libyan land. Recognising they’d been returned to their place of torment, they panicked, cried and threatened collective suicide. The women were separated from the men – Alarm Phone activists could hear them shout in the background. In the evening, contact with this second group of migrants was lost. </p>
<p>During the evening of January 23, several of the women of the group reached out to the activists. They said that during the night, Libyan security forces boarded the merchant vessel and transported small groups into the harbour of Misrata, where they were taken to a detention centre. They said they’d been beaten when refusing to disembark. One of them, bleeding, feared that she had already lost her unborn child. </p>
<p>On the next day, the situation worsened further. The women told the activists that Libyan forces entered their cell in the morning, pointing guns at them, after some of the imprisoned had tried to escape. Reportedly, every man was beaten. The pictures they sent to the Alarm Phone made it <a href="https://www.corriere.it/esteri/19_gennaio_25/migranti-lady-sham-sono-chiusa-un-centro-detenzione-ho-aborto-corso-7e471f50-2074-11e9-926b-daa18cae285e.shtml?refresh_ce-cp">into Italian news</a>, showing unhygienic conditions, overcrowded cells, and bodies with torture marks.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257508/original/file-20190206-174873-zfk2c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photos sent via WhatsApp to Alarm Phone by some of the migrants returned to Misrata.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alarm Phone</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just like the 106 travellers on the “white balloon”, this second group of 144 people had risked their lives but were now back in their hell. </p>
<h2>Profiteering</h2>
<p>It’s more than likely that for some of these migrant travellers, this was not their first attempt to escape Libya. The tens of thousands captured at sea and returned over the past years have found themselves entangled in the European-Libyan refoulement “industry”. Due to European promises of financial support or border technologies, regimes with often questionable human rights records have wilfully taken on the role as Europe’s frontier guards. In the Mediterranean, the Libyan coastguards are left to do the dirty work while European agencies – such as <a href="https://frontex.europa.eu/">Frontex</a>, <a href="https://www.operationsophia.eu/">Eunavfor Med</a> as well as the Italian and Maltese coastguards – have withdrawn from the most contentious and deadly areas of the sea.</p>
<p>It’s sadly not surprising that flagrant human rights violations have become the norm rather than the exception. Quite cynically, several factions of the Libyan coastguards have profited not merely from Europe’s financial support but also from playing a “double game” in which they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/08/un-accuses-libyan-linked-to-eu-funded-coastguard-of-people-trafficking">continue to be involved</a> in human smuggling while, disguised as coastguards, clampdown on the trade of rival smuggling networks. This means that the Libyan coastguards profit often from both letting migrant boats leave and from subsequently recapturing them. </p>
<p>The detention camps in Libya, where torture and rape are everyday phenomena, are not merely containment zones of captured migrants – they form crucial extortion zones in this refoulement industry. Migrants are turned into “cash cows” and are repeatedly subjected to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1975612017ENGLISH.PDF">violent forms of extortion</a>, often forced to call relatives at home and beg for their ransom. </p>
<p>Despite this systematic abuse, migrant voices cannot be completely drowned out. They continue to appear, rebelliously, from detention and even from the middle of the sea, reminding us all about Europe’s complicity in the production of their suffering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is a member of the Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>How the ‘refoulement’ industry between Europe and Libya works.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1076162018-11-28T12:37:49Z2018-11-28T12:37:49ZConcerns over Eritrea’s role in efforts by Africa and EU to manage refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247244/original/file-20181126-140507-1sg92g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Migrants arriving on the island of Lampedusa, southern Italy in April 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Ettore Ferrari</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Early in 2019 the Eritrean government will take over the chair of the key Africa and European Union (EU) forum dealing with African migration, known as <a href="https://www.khartoumprocess.net/about/the-khartoum-process">the Khartoum Process</a>.</p>
<p>The Khartoum Process was established in the Sudanese capital in 2014. It’s had little public profile, yet it’s the most important means Europe has of attempting to halt the flow of refugees and migrants from Africa. The official title says it all: The EU-Horn of Africa Migration Route Initiative. Its main role is <a href="https://www.iom.int/eu-horn-africa-migration-route-initiative-khartoum-process">spelled out as being</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>primarily focused on preventing and fighting migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chairing the Khartoum Process <a href="https://www.khartoumprocess.net/about/actors-and-governance">alternates</a> between European and African leaders. In January it will be Africa’s turn. The steering committee has five African members – Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan. A number of others nations, such as Kenya to Tunisia, have participating status. </p>
<p>The African countries chose Eritrea to lead this critical relationship. But it’s been heavily criticised because it places refugees and asylum seekers in the hands of a regime that is notorious for its human rights abuses. Worse still, there is evidence that Eritrean officials are directly implicated in human trafficking the Khartoum Process is meant to end. </p>
<p>That the European Union allowed this to happen puts in question its repeated assurances that human rights are at the heart of its foreign policies.</p>
<h2>The Khartoum Process</h2>
<p>The Khartoum Process involves a huge range of initiatives. All are designed to reduce the number of Africans crossing the Mediterranean. These include training the fragile Libyan government’s coastguards, who round up migrants at sea and return them to the brutal conditions of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/08/refugee-libyan-camp-people-dying">Libyan prison camps</a>.</p>
<p>The programme has sometimes backfired. Some EU-funded coastguards have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/08/un-accuses-libyan-linked-to-eu-funded-coastguard-of-people-trafficking">accused of involvement in people trafficking</a> themselves. </p>
<p>The EU has also established a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/region/horn-africa/regional/regional-operational-centre-support-khartoum-process-and-au-horn-africa_en">regional operational centre</a> in Khartoum. But this has meant European officials collaborating with the security forces of a government which has regularly abused its own citizens, as well as foreigners on its soil. President Omar al-Bashir himself has been <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/darfur/albashir">indicted</a> for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.</p>
<p>The centre requires European police and other officers to work directly with the security officials who uphold the Sudanese government. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/africa/migration-european-union-sudan.html">According</a> to the head of the immigration police department,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The planned countertrafficking coordination centre in Khartoum – staffed jointly by police officers from Sudan and several European countries, including Britain, France and Italy – will partly rely on information sourced by Sudanese National Intelligence. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The centre also receives support from Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2017/11/sudan-rsf-unit-accused-abuses-migrants-171117133237654.html">which grew out of the Janjaweed</a>: notorious for the atrocities it committed in Darfur. </p>
<p>These initiatives are all very much in line with the <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/21839/action_plan_en.pdf">migration agreement</a> signed in the Maltese capital in 2015. Its action plan detailed how European institutions would co-operate with their African partners to fight</p>
<blockquote>
<p>irregular migration, migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Europe promised to offer training to law enforcement and judicial authorities in new methods of investigation and to assist in setting up specialised anti-trafficking and smuggling police units.</p>
<p>It is this sensitive relationship that will now come under Eritrean supervision. They will be dealing with some of the most vulnerable men, women and children who have fled their own countries. It is here that the process gets really difficult, because Eritrean government officials have themselves been implicated in human trafficking. UN researchers, working for the Security Council <a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Full_Report_1869.pdf">described how this took place</a> in 2011. </p>
<p>More recently, survivors of human trafficking interviewed by a team led by Dutch professor Mirjam van Reisen, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mirjam_Reisen/publication/316989834_Human_Trafficking_and_Trauma_in_the_Digital_Era_The_Ongoing_Tragedy_of_the_Trade_in_Refugees_from_Eritrea/links/59f0afeda6fdcc1dc7b8e9c9/Human-Trafficking-and-Trauma-in-the-Digital-Era-The-Ongoing-Tragedy-of-the-Trade-in-Refugees-from-Eritrea.pdf">described</a> how the Eritrean Border Surveillance Unit ferried refugees out of Eritrea, at a price. </p>
<p>The danger is that implicated Eritrean officials will play a critical role in the development of the Khartoum Process.</p>
<h2>Europe’s commitment to human rights</h2>
<p>The EU has repeatedly stressed that its commitment to <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A12007L%2FTXT">human rights runs through everything it does</a>. Yet the Eritrean government, with which the EU is now collaborating so closely, has been <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23272&LangID=E">denounced</a> for its human rights abuses by no less than the Special Rapporteur for Eritrea to the UN Human Rights Council as recently as June 2018. </p>
<p>As Mike Smith, who chaired the UN Commission Inquiry into Eritrea in 2015, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=16139&LangID=E">put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The many violations in Eritrea are of a scope and scale seldom seen anywhere else in today’s world. Basic freedoms are curtailed, from movement to expression; from religion to association. The Commission finds that crimes against humanity may have occurred with regard to torture, extrajudicial executions, forced labour and in the context of national service.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The EU itself has remained silent. It is difficult to see how the EU can allow its key African migration work to be overseen by such a regime, without running foul of its own human rights commitments. European leaders need to reconsider their relationships with African governments implicated in gross human rights abuses if they are to uphold these values. </p>
<p>The Khartoum Process may have reduced the flow of refugees and asylum seekers across the Mediterranean. But it hasn’t eliminated the need for a fresh approach to their plight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Plaut is affiliated with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London</span></em></p>It is difficult to see how the EU can allow its key African migration work to be supervised by Eritrea.Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1019282018-09-07T09:19:48Z2018-09-07T09:19:48ZGibraltar’s decision to strip flag from Aquarius rescue ship undermines ancient seafaring principle of solidarity<p>Gibraltar’s decision in late August to terminate permission for the Aquarius to operate as a rescue vessel in the Mediterranean is just the latest example of governments politicising and undermining search and rescue at sea. The fatal consequences of such moves are becoming alarmingly evident, with the UNHCR reporting that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/eu-policies-to-blame-deaths-at-sea-mediterranean-amnesty-international-report?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=36d9c66213-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_09_04_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-36d9c66213-19">death rate in the Mediterranean has soared</a>, particularly on the Central Mediterranean route where the Aquarius has been conducting rescue operations under the Gibraltar flag. </p>
<p>SOS Méditerranée, which runs the Aquarius, <a href="https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180828/local/migrant-rescue-ship-aquarius-getting-panama-flag.687824">has now applied</a> for registration under the flag of Panama. Both Panama and Gibraltar are known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-hard-to-keep-track-of-ships-that-get-up-to-no-good-38323">“flag states”</a>, and are responsible for ensuring that the vessels on their registry <a href="http://dev.ulb.ac.be/ceese/ABC_Impacts/glossary/flag.php">comply with international rules and standards</a>.</p>
<p>The Gibraltar government <a href="https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/new/sites/default/files/press/2018/Press%20Releases/469-2018.pdf">stated</a> that the decision to strip the Aquarius of her flag was taken independently by the Maritime Administrator on the basis of a “proper interpretation of all the applicable rules” and that it “was a totally non-political decision”. But my conversations suggest otherwise.</p>
<p>The decision appeared to follow the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/aquarius-charity-rescue-boat-italy-uk-libya-m-decins-sans-fronti-res-gibraltar-a8489671.html">Italian government’s demand</a> that the UK accept the 141 people rescued by the Aquarius on August 10, because the ship was operating under the Gibraltar flag. Gibraltar is an overseas territory of the UK, a status <a href="http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Portal/en/PoliticaExteriorCooperacion/Gibraltar/Paginas/Historia.aspx">contested</a> by Spain. </p>
<p>The Italian government’s claim that the UK, as the “flag state”, should accept the people rescued by the Aquarius is not without precedent. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher reluctantly accepted people <a href="http://refugeehistory.org/blog/2018/6/22/the-aquarius-and-its-historic-precedents-rescue-at-sea-and-the-politics-of-disembarkation">rescued by ships flying the UK flag</a> during the Indochina Refugee Crisis.</p>
<p>When I asked the Maritime Administrator to explain its “interpretation” of “all the applicable rules”, I was referred to the Gibraltar government. This was despite the fact that in its <a href="https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/new/sites/default/files/press/2018/Press%20Releases/469-2018.pdf">press release</a>, the government described the decision as an “administrative process … in which the government has or has had no involvement”. When asked to clarify, the government said the Aquarius’s permission to operate under the Gibraltar flag had been terminated and advised that it had no further comment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235206/original/file-20180906-190668-64g2z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The harbour at Gibraltar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTUzNjI1OTIwMiwiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfMTE2OTc0NzE5NCIsImsiOiJwaG90by8xMTY5NzQ3MTk0L21lZGl1bS5qcGciLCJtIjoxLCJkIjoic2h1dHRlcnN0b2NrLW1lZGlhIn0sIk5OUSsxQWZCcWhBY3hMejZMbElEKzhVOHI2VSJd%2Fshutterstock_1169747194.jpg&pi=33421636&m=1169747194&src=om-DoiJ-jFtWmktyshb1Sw-1-6">Petr Pavlica/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Without any further explanation, it’s difficult to imagine how any interpretation of all the applicable rules could lead to the decision to terminate the Aquarius’s permission to conduct rescue operations. </p>
<p>An expert with years of experience negotiating and interpreting the “applicable rules”, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that the decision seems absurd. They said interfering with rescue at sea for political reasons ashore is a disgrace.</p>
<h2>Help for those in distress</h2>
<p>In fact, the rules are quite simple. The overriding legal obligation placed on all – including coastal and flag states, and vessels of all kinds – is the duty to provide assistance to those in distress at sea. There is nothing in the suite of international conventions that provide the framework for the international law of the sea that appears to justify Gibraltar’s decision. What other rules the Gibraltar government might be referring to remain a mystery. </p>
<p>But the move comes as states such as Italy and Malta at the EU’s Mediterranean border are increasingly closing their ports to vessels that have rescued people at sea, until other member states agree to receive and process asylum requests from the people onboard. </p>
<p>This is <a href="http://refugeehistory.org/blog/2018/6/22/the-aquarius-and-its-historic-precedents-rescue-at-sea-and-the-politics-of-disembarkation">not a new phenomenon</a>. In the 1970s, coastal states such as Hong Kong (then under British colonial control) refused entry to commercial ships that rescued people escaping Vietnam in the aftermath of the failed US intervention. More recently, in 2001, Australia <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-turns-away-rescue-ship-carrying-asylum-seekers-667207.html">refused entry</a> to a commercial ship after directing her captain to rescue 433 people in the international waters around Christmas Island, even sending an SAS team to prevent her from entering Australian territorial waters. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean-75086">NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean</a>
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<h2>Solidarity at stake</h2>
<p>Today, NGOs are essential to the provision of search and rescue in the central Mediterranean, because of the tragically inadequate search and rescue provision from EU member states and agencies. While these NGOs initially managed to forge a cooperative, if sometimes uneasy, relationship with coastal states’ search and rescue authorities, recent developments have seen their operations being <a href="https://theconversation.com/crew-of-ngo-ship-grounded-in-malta-sound-alarm-as-search-and-rescue-co-operation-founders-in-mediterranean-99308">increasingly undermined</a> by national, and nationalist, politics. This comes at a time of increasing intolerance of those who express <a href="https://helprefugees.org/volunteer-blog/the-crime-of-solidarity/">solidarity for refugees in Europe</a>.</p>
<p>Gibraltar’s decision shows how the integrity of the ancient seafaring principle of solidarity (first codified in the <a href="http://www.admiraltylawguide.com/conven/salvage1910.html">1910 Brussels Convention on Salvage</a>, and reflected in all conventions on safety and rescue at sea since) “to render assistance to everybody, even though an enemy, found at sea in danger of being lost”, is being severely undermined by European policies on migration and asylum. Such moves expose how the EU, and Europe’s, commitment to international law, rescue and refuge are being sidelined in the context of a politics that increasingly defines “the migrant” or “asylum-seeker” as an enemy not worthy of rescue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Budge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gibraltar’s decision to terminate permission for the Aquarius to conduct operations in the Mediterranean is the latest example of national politics undermining rescue at sea.Katy Budge, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/991612018-07-09T10:09:41Z2018-07-09T10:09:41ZNew migrant processing centres in EU must avoid inhumanity of ‘hotspots’ in Greece and Italy<p>A new plan to set up “controlled centres” to hold migrants once they arrive in EU territory risks repeating many mistakes of the past, bypassing due process and breaching fundamental human rights and international law. </p>
<p>At the EU’s June summit in Brussels, leaders <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/european-council/2018/06/28-29/">agreed</a> to create centres within EU member states to speed up the processing of asylum requests and assist those countries on the rim of the Mediterranean sea – such as Italy, Malta and Greece – with the mass inflow of migrants. No country would be forced to set up a “controlled centre”, though it’s still unclear who will. </p>
<p>The proposed centres would facilitate the distinction between irregular economic migrants, earmarked for return under the auspices of the International Organisation for Migration, and those in need of international protection, who would be relocated and resettled in those EU member states that would agree to take them under the principle of solidarity. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-difference-between-asylum-seekers-refugees-and-economic-migrants-45615">Explainer: the difference between asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants</a>
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<p>The plan is a compromise reached at the end of a tense and fractious summit to appease an exasperated Italian government. Italy has long been calling for reform of the rules governing which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application – known as the <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32013R0604">Dublin III Regulation</a>. It also appeased the Visegrád Group of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, which has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ability-to-enforce-mandatory-migrant-quotas-is-slipping-out-of-the-eus-grasp-66623">long been against</a> any mandatory refugee relocation quotas among EU member states. </p>
<p>In spite of the fact that arrivals into the EU from the Middle East and Africa have seen <a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/2018_Q1_Overview_Arrivals_to_Europe_0.pdf">a huge drop off</a> since 2015, the plan to build controlled centres is yet another confirmation of how EU migration policy is driven by emergency solutions. This has led to unorthodox, if pragmatic, fudges rather than a considered legal response. It highlights the inability of the EU legislature to reform a system that has long been in need of substantial change. </p>
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<h2>Hotspots in all but name</h2>
<p>It remains unclear what controlled centres would look like, where they will be set up and who will pay for them. The application of the principle of solidarity also remains vague. </p>
<p>An EU official close to the French government <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/142225">said</a> that they would resemble the “hotspots” that were set up in Italy and Greece in 2015. These reception centres <a href="http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/shadow-reports/aida_wrong_counts_and_closing_doors.pdf">were meant to constitute</a> facilities for the first reception, registration and initial processing of migrants at the “external borders” of the EU within 48 hours of arrival – or a maximum of 72 hours. </p>
<p>A 2016 <a href="http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/shadow-reports/aida_wrong_counts_and_closing_doors.pdf">report</a> by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles highlighted how the hotspots introduced greater ambiguity, making it difficult to distinguish whether a person was actually being detained or not. Since March 2016, new arrivals in Greece have no longer been allowed to leave for the mainland but instead must lodge their asylum application at the hotspots. </p>
<p>Relocation in the EU is no longer an option as many EU member states refuse to accept people crossing into their territory who have arrived elsewhere within the EU. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/02/germany-interior-minister-drops-threat-quit-border-controls-horst-seehofer">new deal</a> struck on July 2 in the wake of the EU summit between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her interior minister and coalition partner, Horst Seehofer, illustrates the current state of affairs. </p>
<p>Under this deal, Germany will establish transit centres close to the border with Austria where asylum seekers already registered in another EU member state will be processed before being returned to that country where possible. Where that isn’t possible, the asylum seekers will be sent back across the border to Austria. But the Austrian government quickly <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/142273">warned</a> that it was prepared to “take measures” to protect its southern borders, particularly with Italy and Slovenia, if the German proposals are implemented.</p>
<p>There are still <a href="https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/NewsItem.aspx?nid=8321">more migrants arriving</a> at the hotspots in Greece and Italy than leaving. They are seriously overcrowded with very poor and, in some instances, appalling standards of living, particularly for unaccompanied minors. The Moria camp on the island of Lesbos in Greece is a case in point: built to receive 1,800 people it ended up housing more than 6,000 migrants and asylum seekers. </p>
<p>Migrants are often detained without a court order, forced to be fingerprinted and classified as asylum seekers or irregular economic migrants on the basis of a summary assessment. Due to a lack of interpreters, the new arrivals have very little understanding of what is happening and the procedures available to them. </p>
<p>NGOs have <a href="http://www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/italy/asylum-procedure/access-procedure-and-registration/hotspots">highlighted</a> how people are often classified solely on the basis of their nationality. For example, migrants from Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are often classified as economic migrants.</p>
<p>A lack of transparency and proper monitoring has meant people are denied access to asylum procedures. Those – often arbitrarily – classed as irregular economic migrants can face enforced rejection or mass expulsion, raising profound <a href="https://drc.ngo/media/4051855/fundamental-rights_web.pdf">human rights</a> concerns. </p>
<h2>Preserve basic human dignity</h2>
<p>Like the hotspots before them, the new “controlled centres” leave the Dublin asylum rules untouched. But there is a key lesson to be learnt: the new centres will need to guarantee access to adequate asylum procedures, unlike the hotspots. As the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, emphasised in a <a href="https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/european-states-must-put-human-rights-at-the-centre-of-their-migration-policies">statement</a> about the proposals, people will also need to be housed in dignifying living conditions.</p>
<p>Denying people their human rights challenges their very humanity and goes against the core of their human dignity. Every human possesses an innate worth, just by being human, which needs to be respected and protected.</p>
<p>Fears that the proposed controlled centres will be “old wine in new bottles” are real. More durable solutions based on the rule of law need to be urgently ironed out by the EU legislature in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Velluti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Newly proposed ‘controlled centres’ in the EU must not breach migrants’ human rights.Samantha Velluti, Reader in Law, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/993082018-07-04T11:09:08Z2018-07-04T11:09:08ZCrew of NGO ship grounded in Malta sound alarm as search and rescue co-operation founders in Mediterranean<p>Malta’s <a href="https://sea-watch.org/en/321/">detention of the Sea-Watch 3 vessel</a> on July 2 represents an increasingly aggressive crackdown on NGO search and rescue vessels in the central Mediterranean. While many groups <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/three-ngos-halt-mediterranean-migrant-rescues-after-libyan-hostility">halted their activities</a> over the past year, <a href="https://sea-watch.org/">Sea-Watch</a> continued in its efforts to search for and rescue people on the move across the Mediterranean Sea. </p>
<p>A few days before the ship was detained, I visited the Sea-Watch 3 vessel in Malta as part of my <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/irs/humandignity/">research</a> on Mediterranean border deaths. A newly arrived crew of volunteers were wondering whether or not they would manage to make the journey out to sea. Some of the longer-standing crew members had been busy supporting its sister ship, the Lifeline, which had been stuck at sea for <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44636556">five days</a> with <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rescue-ships-to-be-impounded-as-eus-big-hearted-welcome-shrinks-2mgd530lg">234 vulnerable people on board</a>, including 70 unaccompanied minors, three babies and a child.</p>
<p>As with the <a href="https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/first-boat-in-aquarius-convoy-carrying-630-migrants-docks-in-spain-37018987.html">Aquarius</a> vessel, which became stuck at sea with 630 people on board earlier in June, the Lifeline found that after it had rescued people at sea there was no port open where it could dock. Initially accused of aiding and abetting irregular migration, the captain of the Lifeline was <a href="https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/court_and_police/87932/live_lifeline_captain_taken_to_court_in_malta#.WzodZS2ZNsM">charged in Malta on July 2</a> for the ship’s lack of proper registration and the ship was impounded on the island. </p>
<p>It is in this context that the Sea-Watch 3 vessel was also detained in Malta, despite being listed as a <a href="https://sea-watch.org/en/321/">Dutch vessel</a> entitled to fly the Dutch flag. Although Sea-Watch is a German-based civil society group that also includes volunteers from other countries, the Sea-Watch 3 flies the Dutch flag. It previously sailed as <a href="https://www.msf.org/video-dignity-mediterranean">Dignity I</a> under the Dutch branch of Médecins Sans Frontières, before the 50 metre long ship was bought by Sea-Watch in 2017. <a href="https://sea-watch.org/en/project/sea-watch-2/">Sea-Watch 2</a> was subsequently bought and renamed as Lifeline. </p>
<p>It is not just the <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/141464">criminalisation</a> of crew members that has become a significant factor in impeding NGO missions in the Mediterranean. So too have threats of violence from the Libyan coastguard against such groups. Three NGOs: MSF, Save the Children and Sea Eye <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/three-ngos-halt-mediterranean-migrant-rescues-after-libyan-hostility">stopped</a> their activities in mid-2017 in the face of the hostile stance of the Libyan authorities. </p>
<h2>Co-operation stalling</h2>
<p>The EU has invested resources into <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/13195/eunavfor-med-operation-sophia-starts-training-of-libyan-navy-coast-guard-and-libyan-navy_en">training the Libyan coastguard</a> over the past few years, which has only added to what appears to be an increasingly hostile European response to NGOs carrying out search and rescue in the Mediterranean. The <a href="http://www.imo.org/en/About/Pages/Default.aspx">International Maritime Organisation</a> (IMO) is also providing maritime <a href="http://www.marsecreview.com/2018/05/imo-trains-libya-pfsos/">security training</a> for the Libyan coastguard, in an effort to make it a functioning entity. </p>
<p>When I met members of the Sea-Watch crew in late June, they told me that the IMO had just started to recognise Libya’s capability to coordinate sea rescue. This means that the <a href="https://sarcontacts.info/contacts/comando-generale-del-corpo-delle-capitanerie-di-porto-guardia-costiera-5972/">Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre</a> (MRCC Rome) is now refusing to co-ordinate rescues off the Libyan coast. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-auctions-in-libya-are-the-latest-evidence-of-a-reality-for-migrants-the-eu-prefers-to-ignore-88589">Slave auctions in Libya are the latest evidence of a reality for migrants the EU prefers to ignore</a>
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<p>As one crew member I spoke to said, this has led to the MRCC Rome “actively rejecting any responsibility” for coordinating civilian rescues, so that by late June the co-operation between Sea-Watch and MRCC Rome had “stopped altogether”. </p>
<p>I was told by Sea-Watch crew members that the halt in co-operation of recent weeks reflects a <a href="https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2018/04/pushing-0">broader shift</a> that has been occurring over the past year or so. While Sea-Watch previously saw itself as an ally of MRCC Rome with a shared concern to rescue people at sea, it is now increasingly treated as an intruder that lures people across the Mediterranean Sea to the EU. </p>
<p>The crew on the Sea-Watch cautioned about the unreliability of the Libyan coastguard and their failure to meet the requirements of search and rescue. I was told: </p>
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<p>The Libyan coastguard has grown out of a militia group … in a civil war … we have documented I don’t know how many cases of their mistreatment of the refugees, of violence and abuse which have led to the deaths of people at sea, and for these reasons we absolutely reject to work with them because they are not aiding people.</p>
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<p>Sea-Watch has played a critical role in documenting the <a href="http://www.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-07-FO-Mare-Clausum-full-EN.pdf">aggressive actions of the Libyan coastguard</a>, repeatedly <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/ruben-neugebauer-sea-watch-migrants-in-libya-facing-torture-and-unlawful-detention">echoing</a> wider concerns about the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/19/eu-shifting-rescue-libya-risks-lives">dangers</a> facing people who are intercepted and returned to Libya.</p>
<h2>Lives at stake</h2>
<p>Such cautions fall on deaf ears. The conclusions of the June European Council summit restated the EU’s support for Libyan search and rescue, and <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018/06/29/20180628-euco-conclusions-final/?utm_source=dsms-auto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=European+Council+conclusions%2c+28+June+2018">emphasised</a> that any operations must “not obstruct operations of the Libyan coastguard”. </p>
<p>European leaders have increasingly claimed that search and rescue acts as a “<a href="http://searchandrescue.msf.org/assets/uploads/files/170831_Analysis_SAR_Issue_Brief_Final.pdf">pull factor</a>” for migration, despite research which emphasises that such claims represent little more than a <a href="https://blamingtherescuers.org/report/">toxic narrative</a>. While the EU’s approach is often dressed up in humanitarian terms, migration experts have argued that recent developments reflect the <a href="https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2018/04/pushing-0">end of the humanitarian turn</a> toward search and rescue in the Mediterranean. Despite the best efforts of groups such as Sea-Watch, it appears that there is stronger impetus than ever from within the EU to ensure that this is the case.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean-75086">NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean</a>
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<p>Regardless of the relationship between deaths at sea and organised search and rescue operations in the longer term, in the immediate term the effect of EU actions is that more people die at sea. According to UN Operations in Libya, <a href="https://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2018/07/01/63-migrants-feared-dead-off-libyan-coast/?lang=en">204 people died</a> off the coast of Libya during the last week of June. From this perspective, the lives of people at sea appear as nothing more than collateral damage in Europe’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-migrant-crisis-rescue-boats-refugees-drowning-charity-mediterranean-a8423261.html">offensive against search and rescue NGOs</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Squire receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>The Sea-Watch 3 vessel has been prevented from leaving Malta to continue its search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.Vicki Squire, Reader in International Security, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/972872018-06-26T09:55:39Z2018-06-26T09:55:39ZMigrants have crossed the Mediterranean for centuries – but they used to head from north to south<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224667/original/file-20180625-19404-1u16iye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 16th century chart of Europe and North Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Nautical_chart_of_Mediterranean_area%2C_including_Europe_with_British_Isles_and_part_of_Scandinavia.jpg">Luis Texieira, Portolan Chart, Lisbon, ca. 1600 via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The appointment of Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega party, as Italy’s new interior minister, has already lead to a showdown on migration in the Mediterranean. For the first time, Italy refused to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/asylum-seekers-are-now-political-pawns-in-a-disharmonious-eu-98260">let a boat carrying migrants rescued at sea</a> dock at its ports, amid an increasingly bitter stalemate over migration policy within the European Union. Similar standoffs have <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/24/europe/maersk-lifeline-migrants-stranded-mediterranean-intl/index.html">continued with two</a> other boats. </p>
<p>The racist rhetoric that has found fertile ground in a public debate about migration in Europe tends to centre around two flawed assumptions: that migration is a new phenomenon; and that the Mediterranean has been historically “divided”, with people moving from the poor southern shores to those of the prosperous north.</p>
<p>Migration is central to the history of the Mediterranean and there is a rich tradition of contact between its two shores. In the early modern era, between roughly the 16th and 18th centuries, mobility was intense and varied, in a similar way to today. </p>
<p>In this early modern period it was mostly people from Europe who went to Africa and the Middle East in search of a better life or to escape religious persecution. This trend increased in the 19th century. From the 1830s on, impoverished peasants, from Spain, Malta, Italy, and France, migrated <em>en masse</em> to North Africa. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2014.904811">Italian migration reached its peak</a> in the first decades of the 20th century with an average of 12,770 emigrants a year.</p>
<h2>Reasons for moving</h2>
<p>Many of those who crossed the Mediterranean in the early modern era did so against their will, fleeing wars, or political or religion persecution. The most dramatic case of what we would now call “religious refugees”, was the expulsion of thousands of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492. Expelled Jews resettled across Greece, the Italian states, North Africa and the Middle East, then ruled by the Ottoman sultans. All through the early modern period, the <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/7720">Jews moved south</a> toward Ottoman domains in order to escape their frequent persecution in Europe.</p>
<p>Another form of forced displacement was related to human trafficking. The ancient slave trade routes that crossed the area since antiquity granted the arrival of African slaves to Europe and Ottoman territories. Coastal inhabitants of Spain, North Africa, Italy and Palestine were also often captured during the frequent pirate raids and <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/jmems/article-abstract/37/1/57/1011/The-Geography-of-Slaving-in-the-Early-Modern?redirectedFrom=fulltext">later sold</a> as slaves. Ships and boats of various dimensions could easily become the prey of pirates and corsairs, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml">which led</a> many Englishmen, and Dutchmen to fall into chains. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224671/original/file-20180625-19408-fifryi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A French ship attacked by Barbary pirates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates#/media/File:A_French_Ship_and_Barbary_Pirates_(c_1615)_by_Aert_Anthoniszoon.jpg">Aert Anthoniszoon via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People also travelled across the Mediterranean out of their own choice. The area has always been characterised by a constant movement of soldiers, pilgrims, diplomats and travellers. Like today, men and women moved in search of a better life, but in the early modern period this movement was mostly directed from the northern to the southern shore of the Mediterranean. </p>
<h2>Knowledge of near neighbours</h2>
<p>People from Europe used to move to the Ottoman Empire to seek their fortune, to evade justice or to improve their social prospects in a land that offered many opportunities to newcomers. Some of them found good fortune. Mediterranean history <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-sultans-renegades-9780198791430?cc=gb&lang=en&">furnishes many examples</a> of Italian, Englishmen, and people from other nations who obtained leading positions in the regencies of northern Africa and in Constantinople – modern-day Istanbul. </p>
<p>Whatever the reason, moving to Ottoman territories did not necessarily imply the severance of personal ties. In 1591, a young woman from Venice, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/097194580901200208">Beatrice Michiel, boarded a ship</a> bound for Constantinople where she joined her brother, Gazanfer. Enslaved as a child and trained in the Ottoman court, he had become one of the Sultan’s trusted servants and scaled the Ottoman hierarchy. Over his 20-year stay in Constantinople, Gazanfer never lost touch with his mother and sister in Venice, who subsequently decided to join him.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224672/original/file-20180625-19385-ppevjw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1082&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Roxelana and Süleyman the Magnificent, 1780.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anton_Hickel_001.JPG">Anton Hickel via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Letters from those who had permanently settled in Ottoman lands, ransomed slaves who returned home, merchants and travellers’ stories also contributed to the circulation of tales and ideas about the “neighbours”. Among the stories that circulated in 17th-century Venice, one of the most famous was that of Roxelana. She was a Christian slave girl, born in Rohatyn in current-day Ukraine, who became the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent with the name of Hürrem Sultan. These stories increased people’s curiosity and fuelled their wish to cross the sea. </p>
<p>Goods, objects and food circulated too. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, European elites were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Turquerie.html?id=vlJmngEACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">fascinated by Turkish culture</a>. Ottoman-style fashion inspired, music, architecture and artefacts.</p>
<p>Regulations regarding the arrival of foreigners, border controls and policies of acceptance varied greatly across the Mediterranean in the early modern period. Authorities often showed a very practical approach. The Ottoman state welcomed Jewish refugees in the 15th and 16th century in order to take advantage of their technical competencies and trade networks. </p>
<p>At a time when 19th-century nation state ideology was yet to be born, factors such as religion, rather than than “citizenship” or origin sometimes played a greater role in the policy of acceptance. For example, during the Reformation, the Pope tried to restrict the arrival and stay of protestants within the papal state. In the Ottoman Empire, religious belonging also shaped the politics of integration as religious communities were in charge of offering assistance to newcomers of their own faith.</p>
<h2>A change in direction</h2>
<p>This prevalence of migration from north to south across the Mediterranean continued up until the 20th century, when it began to shift in the other direction. A <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mediterraneans.html?id=IPuWU1EoHf0C&redir_esc=y">first flow</a> of impoverished peasants from northern Africa to Europe, displaced by European colonisation, was followed after the wave of post-World War II independence by the return of those Europeans who had settled in colonies. Later, in the 1970s, the arrival of workers from the southern shore of the Mediterranean was encouraged by European governments in need of workers. </p>
<p>The roots for this shift in direction of migratory flows are found in economic and political processes that started back in the 17th century, such as the growing influence of European power. This would go on to <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb00918.0001.001">reshape the economic relationship</a> between the two shores of the Mediterranean. It would eventually result in the transformation of the Middle East and North Africa during the centuries that followed into suppliers of raw material for French and British factories and pave the way for colonisation. </p>
<p>All this shows that the direction of migration is not immutable – it is influenced instead by historical circumstance. It also lays bare the impact that processes such as colonisation had on migration patterns across the Mediterranean.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felicita Tramontana receives funding from European Commission, in the framework of "Horizon 2020" Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Project: MIGMED (65711). </span></em></p>Migration is central to Mediterranean history and people have always moved between its two shores.Felicita Tramontana, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934512018-03-19T13:16:55Z2018-03-19T13:16:55ZRefugees out of sight, out of mind two years on from EU-Turkey deal<p>An agreement between the European Union and Turkey that came into force two years ago on March 20 2016, <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/eu_turkey_statement_17032017_en.pdf">has reduced</a> the number of migrants arriving on the shores of Greek islands and, however precariously, salvaged the integrity of the Schengen visa system. </p>
<p>But while the EU-Turkey <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5860_en.htm">Joint Action Plan</a> was justified as a measure that would reduce deaths at sea and protect human dignity, the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/afr/news/latest/2016/10/580f3e684/mediterranean-death-toll-soars-2016-deadliest-year.html">dramatic increase</a> in the death rate of those crossing the Mediterranean in 2016 and <a href="https://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/amnesty-international-human-rights-cost-of-eu-turkey-refugee-deal-too-high/50000262-3178987">deteriorating conditions</a> for migrants in Turkey and Greece expose a reality at odds with that rhetoric. </p>
<p>Instead, the plan reflects the philosophy that has long informed the EU’s migration policy: containment.</p>
<p>The EU pursued its deal with Turkey in a state of panic following the dramatic rise in the number of people <a href="https://theconversation.com/fencing-off-the-east-how-the-refugee-crisis-is-dividing-the-european-union-47586">making their way across Europe</a> after landing on the Greek islands from Turkey in summer of 2015. Happy to exploit the EU’s desperation as the Schengen system came under intense pressure, and emboldened by the divisions between EU member states and institutions, by the end of October Turkey had <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-syria-refugees-calls-on-eu-to-speed-up-cash-flow-in-migrant-deal/">extracted</a> a promise of €6 billion funding by 2018. </p>
<p>The deal struck between the EU and Turkey also committed to the acceleration of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and the “re-energisation” of EU membership talks. In return, it was anticipated that Turkey would accept the return of people who reached Greece by sea, improve conditions for refugees in Turkey, and use its security forces to intercept migrants and stop boats leaving its shores. In parallel, for every person returned to Turkey, a Syrian refugee would be accepted for resettlement in the EU, while refugees in Greece and Italy would be relocated to other EU countries.</p>
<h2>Increasingly deadly</h2>
<p>When the deal came into force five months later on March 20, it had immediate implications for refugees hoping to seek asylum in Europe. Departures from Turkey became increasingly difficult and dangerous as Turkish coast guards and military personnel – with a history of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/03/turkey/syria-border-guards-shoot-block-fleeing-syrians">shooting at refugees</a> – secured its Mediterranean border. While the EU claimed that arrivals in Greece reduced by <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/background-information/eu_turkey_statement_17032017_en.pdf">97% in the year</a> following the deal, the number of deaths in the Mediterranean did not, as refugees became more dependent on people smugglers and were driven to take far <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/news/15880">more dangerous</a> routes to Europe from North Africa.</p>
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<p>In fact, 2016 proved to be the deadliest year yet as over 5,000 people drowned in the Mediterranean and the chance of death <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean">increased</a> from one in 1,098 in 2015 to one in 55 in 2016. With over 3,000 fatalities in 2017, and 463 by mid-March 2018, the Mediterranean retains its grim title as the deadliest migration route in the world.</p>
<p>Those unable to leave Turkey continue to experience restrictions on access to basic services and employment. And as the refugee population reaches nearly 4m, there are still no prospects of full protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention and <a href="https://theconversation.com/syrian-refugees-in-turkey-time-to-dispel-some-myths-80996">increasing resentment from locals</a>. This precarious situation has been exacerbated by increasing authoritarianism and human rights abuses in Turkey, with the Erdoğan government escaping the reprimands that would generally be directed towards an EU candidate country with such declining democracy, rights and rule of law standards.</p>
<p>In Greece, those already on the Greek islands have effectively been <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR2537782016ENGLISH.PDF">detained</a> while those on the mainland have been <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR2537782016ENGLISH.PDF">prevented</a> from moving beyond Greece’s borders. The legal ambiguities of the action plan and multiple rulings by Greek asylum tribunals that Turkey does not provide effective protection for refugees have meant that only 4% – <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/20170906_seventh_report_on_the_progress_in_the_implementation_of_the_eu-turkey_statement_en.pdf">1,896</a> of <a href="http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5179">45,792</a> – of those arriving from Turkey to Greece since March 2016 have been returned. Instead, new arrivals must be processed in Greece rather than returned to Turkey, undermining one of the EU’s priority clauses in the deal and resulting in overcrowded, squalid and unsafe conditions for refugees in Greece. </p>
<p>These conditions could have been mitigated to some extent with the effective implementation of a comprehensive relocation scheme. But member states – and particularly the Visegrad countries that have refused to accept any refugees – have been stubbornly reluctant to engage in joint action based on solidarity and the sharing of responsibility. As such, the EU programme that promised to relocate 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy to other EU countries closed at the end of 2017 with <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20170906_relocation_and_resettlement-sharing_responsibility_and_increasing_legal_pathways_to_europe_en.pdf">only around 27,000 places</a> filled.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/named-and-shamed-eu-countries-are-failing-to-share-responsibility-for-refugees-80918">Named and shamed: EU countries are failing to share responsibility for refugees</a>
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<h2>Way forward blocked</h2>
<p>And as negotiations begin in Brussels on the next phase of the EU’s approach to irregular migration, the tensions between EU member states and institutions are conspicuous. While almost all member states failed to meet their quotas for relocation, there is a clear divide between the countries that begrudgingly support the approach, and the position of those as viscerally opposed, such as Hungary. Its prime minister, Victor Orban, described the programme as something enforced by western EU countries under the <a href="https://budapestbeacon.com/orban-western-europe-will-rape-us-not-consent/?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=97fc73e955-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-97fc73e955-190121149">threat of “rape”</a>. </p>
<p>The countries that oppose quotas – many of which are subject to <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-5002_en.htm">legal proceedings</a> by the European Commission for refusing to accept relocated refugees – have been buoyed by recent election results favouring anti-immigration parties and European Council president Donald Tusk’s <a href="https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Tusk-letter.pdf">description</a> of the relocation programme as “highly divisive” and “ineffective”. They are now looking to build a coalition against pro-quota member states and hope to convince others that a continued emphasis on containment, rather than relocation, remains the only broadly acceptable solution, despite the costly concessions required to sustain the co-operation of transit states such as Turkey. </p>
<p>The EU <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-5860_en.htm">fact sheet</a> that accompanied the launch of the deal two years ago claimed that “human dignity is at the core of our common endeavour”. But the deal has instead revealed a reversal of the power asymmetries between the EU and Turkey and exposed the moral compromises that the EU is prepared to make in the face of what American political scientist Kelly Greenhill <a href="https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/11515/SI_V9_I1_2010_Greenhill_116.pdf">has called</a> Turkey’s “weapon of mass migration”. </p>
<p>While the EU might <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/18/europe-wishes-to-inform-you-that-the-refugee-crisis-is-over/">want you to think</a> that its migration crisis is over, the truth is that, as Mediterranean drownings are confined to the waters off North Africa rather the beaches of European holiday destinations, and refugees are contained outside or at the periphery or the EU, the EU-Turkey deal has simply pushed refugees out of sight and out of mind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Budge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In March 2016, the EU struck a deal with Turkey to stop migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Greece. What has happened since?Katy Budge, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Politics, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888092018-02-20T08:30:48Z2018-02-20T08:30:48ZRepatriating migrants misses the point. Systemic issues need to be tackled<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205243/original/file-20180207-74509-1jpah8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters in South Africa, highlight the plight of immigrants forced into slavery in Libya. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> EPA-EFE/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2017 <a href="http://www.sommetuaue2017.ci/">European Union-African Union Summit</a> held in Abidjan in December drew up an emergency plan to <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1DU1DK-OZATP">repatriate</a> scores of African migrants held <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2017/10/59e5c7a24/libya-refugees-migrants-held-captive-smugglers-deplorable-conditions.html">captive</a> in Libya, and to crack down on the people smugglers.</p>
<p>Since the adoption of the plan, over <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/12/19/au-eu-and-un-to-address-migrant-situation-in-libya">3,000 migrants</a> have been repatriated to <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/migrants-repatriation-libya-camps-1.4439171">Gambia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast</a>. The number falls short of the targeted <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/migrants-repatriation-libya-camps-1.4439171">20,000</a> the AU wished to return within six weeks of adopting the plan. </p>
<p>About <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/migrants-repatriation-libya-camps-1.4439171">400,000 to 700,000 migrants</a> remain in precarious conditions in Libya. In a separate programme the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has evacuated <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2018/1/5a5882524/unhcr-appeals-resettlement-160-reported-mediterranean-deaths.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=HQ_EN_post_Global_Core%20Social%20Media%20Outreach">hundreds</a> to Niger and Italy since November 2017. </p>
<p>On the face of it, the decision to repatriate the migrants is a welcome pragmatic intervention. But, at best, it’s cosmetic because it fails to consider the fundamental causes of human flight from Africa. The EU and the AU should rather first address policy and governance issues that create conditions that compel young Africans to seek a better life elsewhere.</p>
<p>Before drawing up the emergency plan, the European and African leaders should have asked themselves whether, given an option, the migrants would willingly have chosen to return home? </p>
<p>I argue that they wouldn’t have for two main reasons. Firstly, they face adverse living conditions at home some of which are partly due to destructive EU policies in Africa. Secondly, some of the AU or member states’ leaders rule over countries that make life difficult for their citizens.</p>
<h2>Bad EU policies</h2>
<p>The economic circumstances that compel Africans to migrate are aggravated by the negative impact of EU policies. Two cases in point are the EU <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp/">Common Fisheries Policy</a> and the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-overview_en">Common Agricultural Policy</a>.</p>
<p>The fisheries policy has had a negative impact on the fisheries industries in West Africa. For example, most of the <a href="http://www.whofishesfar.org/case-studies/new-data-on-european-union-external-fishing-fleet-more-transparency-in-world-fisheries">agreements</a> the EU has with African countries that have sizeable fishing industries on Africa’s central and western coasts are stacked against African countries. </p>
<p>Also problematic are the subsidies paid to EU commercial fishermen, including those <a href="https://africacenter.org/publication/criminality-africa-fishing-industry-threat-human-security/">guilty</a> of illegal fishing. Not only are small-time and subsistence fishermen in West Africa unable to compete. Their fishing stocks are depleted for European consumers. Livelihoods are destroyed, food security and marine ecosystems are eroded.</p>
<p>And subsidies paid to EU farmers under its agricultural policy <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/26/eu-is-responsible-for-using-taxpayers-money-to-undercut-african/">hurt</a> African farmers. They distort markets, undercut farmers, reduce their productive or competitive capabilities affecting entire livelihoods and lifestyles. </p>
<h2>Violation of UN protocols</h2>
<p>According to the AU and EU, the repatriation of migrants is voluntary. But the voluntary nature of these repatriations has been <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/news/eu-africa-agree-on-repatriating-migrants-but-not-on-the-bill/">questioned</a>. Though the final text in the joint declaration pledged voluntary repatriation, the leaders <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/news/eu-africa-agree-on-repatriating-migrants-but-not-on-the-bill/">reportedly</a> clashed over differences in the interpretation of the blurred distinction between voluntary and the forced return of migrants. </p>
<p>In addition, the reality is that some migrants were forced to go back home. For example, several Ivorian migrants who were repatriated by their government claimed that they had been <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/news/eu-africa-agree-on-repatriating-migrants-but-not-on-the-bill/">forced</a> to return home. </p>
<p>Repatriation should be <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/voluntary-repatriation-49c3646cfe.html">voluntary</a> as set out by the UNHCR. The physical, legal and material safety of migrants should be <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/afr/partners/guides/411786694/handbook-repatriation-reintegration-activities-emcomplete-handbookem.html">central</a> to repatriation.</p>
<p>All this is besides the fact that conditions back home remain the same as they had left when they embarked on the perilous journey. The environment in the communities to which the migrants are returning should be stable enough to enable them to rebuild their lives and maintain sustainable livelihoods. They should also have access to basic services in the communities to which they are returning, for them to be fully reintegrated.</p>
<p>Some of the migrants come from countries where there is fully-fledged conflict such as South Sudan. Others come from countries that have been destabilised and where violence is part of people’s everyday reality. In many, people face persecution on the grounds of their ethnicity, political and social orientations or religion. This includes countries such as Egypt, Somalia, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, (northern) Nigeria, Cameroon and, until recently, the Gambia and Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>These conditions generate <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/publications/legal/3bfe68d32/handbook-voluntary-repatriation-international-protection.html">well-founded fears</a> of unstable environments in which the migrants’ safety, dignity and ability to live decent lives are not guaranteed. </p>
<p>Bad economic conditions, like joblessness, are also a factor that drive migration. </p>
<p>The UNHCR’s requirements are that such conditions should no longer exist before anyone is repatriated. African leaders should have attended to these issues before deciding to repatriate the migrants. </p>
<h2>Towards a solution</h2>
<p>The UNHCR estimates that there are 277,000 refugees in need of resettlement in 15 priority asylum and transit countries on the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2018/1/5a5882524/unhcr-appeals-resettlement-160-reported-mediterranean-deaths.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=HQ_EN_post_Global_Core%20Social%20Media%20Outreach">Central Mediterranean route</a>. </p>
<p>Relocation can only ever be part of the solution. Europe and Africa should each urgently address the fundamental causes of human flight from Africa, which are rooted in social and political issues. In the meantime they should provide legal avenues through which reasonable criteria are set and against which migrants can be assessed and qualify for migration. The fact that the European labour market <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/networks/european_migration_network/reports/docs/emn-studies/labour-demand/0_satisfying_labour_demand_through_migration_final_8july2011_en.pdf">requires</a> skilled, semi- and unskilled migrants is beyond debate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Changwe Nshimbi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decision to repatriate migrants is a welcome intervention. But, it fails to consider the fundamental causes.Chris Changwe Nshimbi, Deputy Director & Research Fellow, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/830622017-08-30T10:00:00Z2017-08-30T10:00:00ZViolent evictions of refugees in Rome reveal inhumanity of modern democracy<p>“If they throw something, break their arm,” a police officer <a href="https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/roma/roma-polizia-carica-a-termini-e-disperde-i-rifugiati-il-funzionario-se-tirano-qualcosa-spaccategli-un-braccio/283210/283825?video&ref=twhr&twitter_card=20170824145028">was overhead</a> on video saying to anti-riot police on August 24 who were running after refugees and migrants near Rome’s central train station. The migrants were gathering there after police <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/25/italy-police-beat-refugees-during-eviction">violently removed</a> a group who had been occupying the city’s Piazza Indipendenza. Five days earlier, when around 800 Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants and refugees <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/24/italian-police-water-cannon-refugees-rome-square">were forcibly</a> evicted from a nearby squat on via Curtatone, some emptied out into the piazza with all their belongings and occupied it.</p>
<p>Unjustified and disproportionate state violence was exercised on these vulnerable people from dawn to dusk by the Italian police. They used tear gas, batons and water cannons to clear people from the square. It was a spectacle of violence and human misery: women crying out in protest <a href="https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/roma/roma-sgombero-in-piazza-indipendenza-idranti-contro-rifugiate-una-donna-cade-a-terra-ferita/283190/283804%20%20%20minute%200.24%20till%200.32%20and%201.24-134">were swept away</a> by water cannons, children and elderly people wrapped in blankets had to run for safety. </p>
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<p>Most of the 800 or so residents of the squat on via Curtatone were refugees. But there has been no safety for them, and no sanctuary for those who should be protected under international law. The authorities <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/28/italian-pm-holds-talks-on-migration-after-mass-protest-over-rome-eviction">said</a> the migrants had refused to accept alternative accommodation and pointed to the risk of cooking gas canisters they were using. </p>
<p>After the Piazza Indipendenza events, a mass protest <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/28/italian-pm-holds-talks-on-migration-after-mass-protest-over-rome-eviction">took place in Rome</a> on August 26, attended by over 5,000 people. A group of 40 elderly, sick and young refugees <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/rome-allows-some-african-refugees-to-stay/4005565.html">were subsequently permitted</a> to return to the building for six months. </p>
<p>The violent manner of the original eviction was aimed at erasing the presence of migrants and refugees from the city centre: they apparently must disappear, become invisible in the name of public decorum and order. This is a war on migrants, on the poor, on the vulnerable, on those whose lives are precarious and disposable. </p>
<p>This eviction is part of several recent state interventions in Rome against refugees and migrants. In June, the city’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, <a href="https://theconversation.com/rome-mayors-anti-migrant-stance-signals-shift-further-to-right-for-italys-five-star-movement-79529">announced</a> that the city was “facing a new migrant emergency” and that it could not take new arrivals. This is a marked contrast to comments she made in December 2016 about the need to offer <a href="https://www.facebook.com/virginia.raggi.m5sroma/posts/693172997531819:0">refugees human warmth in Rome</a>. </p>
<p>As migration scholar Nando Sigona <a href="http://theconversation.com/rome-mayors-anti-migrant-stance-signals-shift-further-to-right-for-italys-five-star-movement-79529">argued</a> on The Conversation, this shift in approach was made within the context of pre-election political opportunism in Italy. The issue of migration is moving centre stage as parties look to woo voters.</p>
<h2>From warmth to water cannons</h2>
<p>The inhumane treatment and denial of most basic rights to those in Piazza Indipendenza is the fruit of emergency politics to address migration rather than of a continued approach to sanctuary. Democracies are treating their vulnerable with violence instead of protection and eviction instead of sanctuary. The mayor’s idea of “human warmth” has quickly morphed into water cannons. </p>
<p>Migrants are dying at sea and disappearing from visible public spaces because their presence poses uncomfortable questions about the human condition, and about Western democracies. This is not a migration crisis, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/agnes-woolley/arts-and-humanities-tackling-challenges-of-mass-displacement">it is a crisis of human values</a> – and these events signal that democracy is ailing and failing. </p>
<p>American philosopher <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2339-judith-butler-precariousness-and-grievability-when-is-life-grievable">Judith Butler</a> observes that we approach certain forms of violence with horror, and other forms of violence with acceptance. This schism in moral evaluations occurs because certain lives are regarded as liveable, worthy of protection and worthy fighting for. But other lives are seen as unworthy of protection, not quite lives, at the limits of humanity. They are disposable. </p>
<h2>Moral disintegration</h2>
<p>Across the world, people who live precarious lives at the margins of society and at the limit of humanity continue to be met with violence. <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-12-22-00-the-age-of-humanism-is-ending/">In the words</a> of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, this is “the normalisation of a social state of warfare” – when the social state is weakened and ultimately erased. </p>
<p>The failing democracies of the West are plunging into what the Jamaican cultural philosopher Stuart Hall called <a href="https://newleftreview.org/I/151/stuart-hall-authoritarian-populism-a-reply">“authoritarian populism”</a>, marking the end of the world as we know it. When asked about this social system and the fate of our species, the American philosopher Noam Chomsky <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/">replied</a> that: “It’s terminal disaster. We have constructed a perfect storm.” Under these conditions, our moral compass has been readjusted and our humanity – in the sense of being humane – is compromised.</p>
<p>Resistance, like that staged by the residents of via Curtatone who occupied the piazza after their eviction, can claw back shreds of democracy, dignity and rights. But it is the dominant cultural norms which must be resisted, the very ones regulating and influencing society’s biased moral response towards refugees and migrants. In the era of post-truths, when knowledge is overtly, unquestionably and routinely assailed, critical thinking is more crucial than ever to halt the moral disintegration of human kind. </p>
<p>Unlike the cowardly, brute force which can break arms like lifeless sticks, knowledge and critical thinking can be used to stem the tide of oppressive powers. Challenging the inhumanity of police brutality and society’s acceptance of it is a transformative, emancipatory form of resistance. As the American writer Toni Morrison <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/no-place-self-pity-no-room-fear/">put it</a>, it is “critical to refuse to succumb to [the world’s] malevolence … that is how civilisations heal.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariangela Palladino receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Police used water cannons and tear gas to remove a group of migrants and refugees from a square in Rome in August.Mariangela Palladino, Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies (Migration, Mobilities, Diaspora), Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829512017-08-25T09:33:57Z2017-08-25T09:33:57ZIs Spain really facing a new migration crisis?<p>The headlines state it clearly, and in capital letters. “Migrant crisis: Spain rescues 600 people in busiest day,” wrote the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40957089">BBC</a>. “Spain rescues HUNDREDS of migrants crossing from Morocco,” exclaimed the UK’s <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/842221/Spain-migrants-Morocco-arrivals">Express</a>. According to these reports, there is a growing migrant crisis in Spain as the number of people crossing the Strait of Gibraltar by boat increases. The problem is, in most of them there’s a little evidence, a lot of dramatising and not much perspective. So is it right to speak of a crisis?</p>
<p><a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/58424">The available data</a> does show an upturn in boat migration from Morocco to Spain. There have been consistent increases in the number of people seeking to reach Spain irregularly by boat over the past five years. According to <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/58424">the UNHCR</a>, 3,237 arrivals were recorded by sea in 2013 but by 2016 this had more than doubled to 8,162. In 2017, this process has accelerated and <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/country/esp">by mid-August</a> there were 9,738 people recorded having made the sea journey. This was more than in all of the previous year. </p>
<p>People of many different nationalities are making the journey. <a href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/58424">Data from UNHCR recording arrivals up to May 31 2017</a> showed 60% of those arriving by boat were from the west African countries of Ivory Coast, Gambia or Guinea. Another 13% were made up of people from Morocco, and the remainder included a range of other nationalities from north, west and central Africa, as well as the Middle East. </p>
<p>However, when we look back further we see that current levels are not entirely unprecedented. <a href="http://www.interior.gob.es/documents/10180/3066430/Balance+2015+de+la+lucha+contra+la+inmigraci%C3%B3n+irregular.pdf/d67e7d4b-1cb9-4b1d-94a0-9a9ca1028f3d">Between 2000 and 2008</a> more than 10,000 irregular migrants per year were recorded arriving on Spanish shores. The highest number for a single year came in 2006, when more than 39,000 people recorded arrived – although the majority of these landed on the Canary Islands and not on mainland Spain. The highest number crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and landing on the mainland came in 2001, when more than 14,000 landings were recorded.</p>
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<p>Nearly 4,000 people have also arrived by land so far this year, crossing into the Spanish enclaves of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14114627">Ceuta and Melilla</a> on the Moroccan coast. But this is not particularly different from the 6,000 land arrivals recorded in 2016 and is quite a way below <a href="http://www.interior.gob.es/documents/10180/3066430/Balance+2015+de+la+lucha+contra+la+inmigraci%C3%B3n+irregular.pdf/d67e7d4b-1cb9-4b1d-94a0-9a9ca1028f3d">the 11,000 arrivals recorded in 2015</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/jorgencarling/status/896095358383566848">Projections</a> for the remainder of 2017 have claimed that irregular migration by boat to the Spanish mainland will be higher than any of the figures we have seen previously. This may well be the case and the Spanish government should be preparing itself. </p>
<p>But even so, that doesn’t necessarily make it a crisis. These figures are still far behind <a href="http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5205">those seen in Italy</a>, where more than 180,000 people arrived in 2016 and 98,000 so far in 2017. It is also far behind the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/20/pena-nietos-promises-refugees">estimated half a million people</a> who cross the southern border of Mexico per year or the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-29/huge-influx-of-refugees-in-uganda/8661122">1.3m refugees who entered Uganda</a> over the last year, most fleeing conflict in South Sudan.</p>
<h2>Where they are travelling from</h2>
<p>In much of the reporting on the situation so far, boat migration to Spain has been interpreted as part of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40895571">a generalised migration crisis across the Mediterranean</a>. At the heart of these reports is the assumption that migration routes are rapidly shifting from the central Mediterranean route, which covers the stretch of sea between North Africa and Italy, to the western one between Morocco and Spain.</p>
<p>It is now widely accepted that migration controls rarely stop migration but tend to shift people towards different routes and ways of travelling. And this might be happening in the Mediterranean. On the central route, since July 2017 there has been a sudden <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/world/europe/migrant-crisis-italy-libya.html?mcubz=0">fall in the number of people making the journey</a>. This is likely due to a range of factors. Agreements with governments and tribal groups along migration routes into and within Libya, the expansion of operations by the Libyan Coastguard taking migrant boats back to Libya and the <a href="https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/executive-summaries/2017/08/14?utm_source=Refugees+Deeply&utm_campaign=35aa5b4313-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b056c90e2-35aa5b4313-117600885&ct=t(An_Invitation_to_Refugee_Talks8_21_2017)">ceasing</a> of search and rescue missions at sea by a number of international non-governmental organisations may all be having an impact.</p>
<p>But other developments offer some insight into the increases in migration to Spain too. In June, <a href="https://www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/2017-06-27/jovenes-rif-huyen-patera-andalucia-escapar-represion_1406076/">reports from the Spanish press</a> already mentioned people seeking to leave Morocco to escape civil unrest in the Rif region, where there have been mass arrests <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/08/morocco-dozens-arrested-over-mass-protests-in-rif-report-torture-in-custody/">according</a> to Amnesty International. More recently, <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/sociedad/2017/08/10/598b4c29ca4741113f8b4624.html">it has been suggested that</a> Moroccan police resources have been focused on the Rif region rather than on carrying out patrols against migration, which could also have made it easier to cross without being detected.</p>
<p>As a result, the increase in crossings to Spain cannot be explained only by the decline in crossings to Italy. And so far, reports have not presented much direct evidence from people who have actually decided to go to Spain instead of Italy. More information and time will be needed to have a clearer view of the extent to which current patterns are driven by local factors in Morocco or broader changes further afield.</p>
<h2>Perpetuating a myth</h2>
<p>While the term “crisis” has been employed frequently in international outlets, it has appeared less in the Spanish media. The Spanish government has also refrained from making contentious, headline-grabbing comments or statements.</p>
<p>Despite this, the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/17/spain-refugees-migrants-unhcr-warning">has declared</a> that Spain will be unable to cope with the current surge in arrivals, before also confusingly <a href="http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/internacional/acnur-asegura-que-no-hay-ninguna-crisis-o-emergencia-migratoria-en-espana/20170817/nota/3551815.aspx">saying</a> that “we are a long way from an emergency or crisis”. The International Organisation for Migration <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-migrants-un-idUSKCN1AY19S">has also warned</a> of a “big emergency”, akin to that seen in Greece in 2015. These declarations fuel fears that the situation at Europe’s borders is uncontrollable and reinforce the myth that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20455111?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">a tidal wave of desperate Africans is seeking a way to Europe</a>. </p>
<p>For now it is too early to speak of “a crisis” in the Western Mediterranean. Of course, the current rise in boat migration requires a response which can register people who arrive, address any humanitarian and accommodation needs and provide access to international protection for those who qualify for it. But stoking the fears of a looming crisis risks blocking support for and establishment of these very measures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McMahon currently receives funding from the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Newton Fund for research on Mexico's southern border. </span></em></p>The number of people arriving has risen, but is not the highest on record.Simon McMahon, Research Fellow, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804282017-07-04T12:02:06Z2017-07-04T12:02:06ZItaly’s bluff to close its ports to migrant boats heightens tensions in the Mediterranean<p>Tensions in European politics around the arrival of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea escalated in late June as the Italian government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/28/italy-considers-closing-its-ports-to-ships-from-libya">suggested</a> that it could prohibit NGO ships which had rescued people at sea from docking in its ports. </p>
<p>Italy’s ambassador to the EU <a href="https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2017/06/28/italy-takes-formal-eu-migrant-step-ports-cd-be-blocked-2_5c093f91-a194-4c4f-9cbb-8efb2521a5f5.html">told the EU’s migration commissioner</a> that the situation in the country was “at the limit” and “unsustainable”. Italy’s prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, <a href="http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/06/28/news/migranti_italia_ue_sbarchi-169383917/">also implored</a> other European countries to stop looking the other way because the situation was “no longer sustainable”. </p>
<p>This is a risky move. Prohibiting rescued migrants from arriving in ports is unlikely to be possible in practice and could go against international law. In the meantime, the political rhetoric is poisoning the way search and rescue at sea is seen in Italy and giving credence to the anti-migrant views of an emboldened far-right. What happens next will be a major test of Europe’s capacity to come up with better ways of responding to migration across the Mediterranean.</p>
<h2>Legal difficulties</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/ListOfConventions/Pages/International-Convention-on-Maritime-Search-and-Rescue-(SAR).aspx">International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue</a>, states and ships have an obligation to go to the assistance of nearby vessels in distress. Following rescue operations there is also an <a href="http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Facilitation/personsrescued/Pages/Default.aspx">obligation that rescued people are taken to safety</a>, regardless of their nationality, status or the circumstances in which they are found. In the Mediterranean this means migrant boats in distress should not be left to sink, nor should they be sent back to Libya, where most of them are now coming from.</p>
<p>In practice, stand offs between migrant boats and the Italian authorities have already happened before. In 1991, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/08/09/albania-and-italy-block-ports/5dd4c235-5f09-4b6c-8ca6-fa9c0e381ccf/">the Vlora</a>, a freighter full of people fleeing Albania, was initially blocked from entering the port of Bari but landed anyway with conditions on board rapidly deteriorating. In 2004, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/12/sudan.italy">the Cap Anamur</a>, a German aid ship, rescued 37 people from a dinghy between Libya and Italy but was stopped from entering Italian ports. After a two-week standoff they were allowed to land when the deteriorating physical and psychological well-being of everyone on board was said to be putting the ship and crew in danger. </p>
<p>These historical stand offs suggest that the current tensions are a bluff – ships are eventually allowed to land. Italy is using the threat to press their European neighbours for increased support. </p>
<p>So far, however, <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STATEMENT-17-1876_en.htm">an expression of “strong solidarity”</a> on July 3 from the French and German interior ministers has offered little in terms of positive, concrete developments. A code of conduct for NGOs will now be drafted by Italy, despite the fact that Mediterranean search and rescue organisations <a href="https://www.humanrightsatsea.org/?smd_process_download=1&download_id=7061">already have one</a>. The Libyan coastguard will be given increased training and financial support but they’ve proved to be unpredictable partners, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/libyan-coastguard-opens-fire-migrant-boats-ngos-170525100451559.html">shooting at migrants and rescue boats</a>. </p>
<p>Efforts will also be made to improve facilities for migrants in Libya but this is likely to be a slow process as the country remains mired in political chaos and insecurity, with migrants held in <a href="http://globalinitiative.net/report-the-human-conveyor-belt-trends-in-human-trafficking-and-smuggling-in-post-revolution-libya/">crowded, unsanitary and often violent detention centres</a>. In any case, Libyan coastguards and other authorities are also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2017/07/02/they-are-not-treated-like-humans-inside-libyas-thriving-migrant-trade/?utm_term=.ba5c31055ab3">reported to have</a> links with migrant smuggling. </p>
<p>Italy may also demand that ports of other countries within Europe or nearer to Libya accept rescue boat disembarkations. A stepping up of refugee relocation out of Italy would be welcome too. In September 2015 it was said that 39,600 relocations would take place from Italy within two years. So far, <a href="https://t.co/wlzda4suJL">only 20% of that figure</a> has been achieved and some EU member states have refused to take anyone in at all. </p>
<h2>Blaming NGOs</h2>
<p>The threat to close Italy’s ports also heralds a worrying escalation of anti-NGO rhetoric within the country. For a while now, rescue operations have been presented by critics as a “pull factor” which makes the dangerous journey across the sea appear less risky to migrants. At the end of 2016, the FT <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3e6b6450-c1f7-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856354">reported</a> that Frontx, the EU’s border management agency, had circulated confidential reports claiming that NGOs in the Mediterranean worked in collusion with smugglers. A few months later, a prosecutor in Italy <a href="http://www.lastampa.it/2017/04/23/italia/cronache/abbiamo-le-prove-dei-contatti-tra-scafisti-e-alcuni-soccorritori-3fCnqLKWWRHBVUiygHv65K/pagina.html">publicly claimed</a> that he had evidence of it. </p>
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<p>Political debate fed off these rumours with increased criticism of search and rescue. In April, Luigi di Maio from the Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement), deplored what he called <a href="http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/politica/2017/04/23/migranti-di-maio-ong-hanno-trasportato-criminali-_48c4044a-7c54-42a0-ae81-99464536f076.html">a “taxi service”</a> being run by NGOs for illegal migrants. Matteo Salvini of the Lega Nord party which has long held an anti-immigrant stance, followed up by stating that <a href="http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/04/30/news/ong_migranti_salvini_dossier-164301374/">Italian secret services had a file</a> recording relationships between smugglers and NGOs. The president of Italy’s parliamentary committee for control of the secret services <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2017/05/02/la-cei-condanna-gli-attacchi-alle-ong-fuoco-politico-ipocrita_a_22064896/">later denied</a> this. </p>
<p>Despite making public statements about smuggler-NGO collusion, the prosecutor looking into the allegations at the time <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39686239">had also not yet opened a criminal investigation</a>. He later said that he <a href="http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2017/04/28/news/carmelo_zuccaro_denuncio_non_ho_prove_sta_ai_politici_fermare_il_fenomeno_-164101452/">did not have enough proof</a>.</p>
<p>But xenophobic far-right groups were emboldened. In May, an organisation known as Generazione Identitaria <a href="https://news.vice.com/it/article/estrema-destra-crowdfunding-per-bloccare-ong">physically blocked an NGO ship</a> from leaving port to carry out operations. It has since started crowdfunding to take its own missions at sea to prevent rescues taking place. </p>
<p>Critics have been vocal, and if their claims are justified then it is right that investigations are carried out. But so far, evidence has not been presented. A <a href="https://blamingtherescuers.org/">recent research project</a> found that claims of collusion were based on “biased analysis and spurious causality links”. This is supported by research my colleagues and I did for the <a href="http://www.medmig.info">MEDMIG project</a> in 2015, when we found that migration across the Mediterranean towards Italy was driven more by a need to get out of Libya than by the prospect of being rescued. Many of the people we spoke with knew that they could die at sea, but still considered that to be better than staying where they were. </p>
<p>The threat to close ports shows the governing Partito Democratico to be taking <a href="http://www.ansa.it/english/news/world/2017/06/28/renzi-backs-govt-hard-line-on-migrants_08258469-3f8d-41c7-a59f-a81c208cf471.html">a harder line in its rhetoric on migration</a>. It follows <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/italy-election-result-berlusconi-led-center-right-scores-upset-wins/">disappointing local elections</a> in late June, and a more vocal anti-migrant stance from the Movimento 5 Stelle’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/rome-mayors-anti-migrant-stance-signals-shift-further-to-right-for-italys-five-star-movement-79529">mayor of Rome</a>.</p>
<p>But the government is also undermining humanitarian work at sea without finding an effective replacement. As <a href="http://msf-analysis.org/bounties-not-bodies-smugglers-profit-sea-rescues-though-no-clear-alternative-available/">noted</a> by Aurelie Ponthieu, a humanitarian specialist on displacement at Medecins Sans Frontieres, search and rescue at sea is not perfect and cannot go on indefinitely. But for now, Europe’s proposals lack a clear, decent long-term alternative to letting people drown.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80428/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McMahon worked on the MEDMIG project which received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>It is a dangerous and illegal move to make.Simon McMahon, Research Fellow, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778142017-05-30T14:10:49Z2017-05-30T14:10:49ZDebunking myths about why people migrate across the Mediterranean<p>As people on the move <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-migrants-asylum-seekers-mediterranean-see-libya-italy-ngos-smugglers-accusations-a7696976.html">continue to make the dangerous journey</a> across the Mediterranean, and as relations between the European Union and Turkey face <a href="https://theconversation.com/europe-needs-to-learn-how-to-work-with-turkey-while-keeping-democracy-alive-74640">imminent meltdown</a>, fears that Europe is being “flooded” with desperate refugees and migrants seeking a better life continue to abound. </p>
<p>A key assumption driving this fear is that large swaths of displaced populations – from Syrians to Nigerians and Afghanis to Eritreans – are picking Europe as their “destination” of choice. However, research my colleagues and I have published in a <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/irs/crossingthemed/ctm_final_report_4may2017.pdf">new report</a> indicate that this assumption is a myth. While some people do of course leave their homes in order to reach <a href="http://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/contents.html">Europe</a>, many do not. </p>
<p>The report is based on 257 in-depth interviews conducted in 2015 and 2016, first in <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/irs/crossingthemed/output/crossing_the_med_evidence_brief_i.pdf">Kos, Malta, Sicily</a> and then in <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/irs/crossingthemed/output/crossing_the_med_evidence_brief_ii.pdf">Athens, Berlin, Istanbul and Rome</a>. We have also created an <a href="https://crossing-the-med-map.warwick.ac.uk/">interactive story map</a> from some of these interviews.</p>
<h2>The myth of ‘destination Europe’</h2>
<p>Many people we interviewed did not even know anything about the EU prior to their arrival. Far from planning his journey with Europe as a destination point, one man from the Ivory Coast told us when we spoke to him in Sicily:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My idea was not to reach Italy. I didn’t know Italy if not for the football. I never thought to come in Europe, because here I have not family. My family is only in Ivory Coast and Burkina. But is my family who pushed me to go to Mali. In Mali there was a war, then I moved to Algeria, otherwise I would have stayed there. I wasn’t lucky enough to stay in Algeria, if not I would have to stay there. I didn’t want to go in Libya, the situation is too crazy to go there. It [was] really hard … to stay in Libya … all these circumstances pushed me to reach here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such unsustainable living situations were reported by many people who travelled to. In Rome, we interviewed a Palestinian-Syrian refugee who had been born in Libya. He told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At first I didn’t want to come to Europe, I wanted to go to another Arabic country. I thought about doing some business in Libya, but then I discovered that there is no security, I can’t be free over there. There is always danger, for everybody. I have discovered a different reality from what I initially imagined in Libya. They treat everyone like slaves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This man’s testimony resonates with recent reports of people being <a href="https://euobserver.com/tickers/137570">sold as slaves</a> or prostitutes in Libya. Even those people aiming to set up a new life in Turkey <a href="http://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/okello.html">reported problems</a> in their journeys that drove them to move on. As an Afghan man told us when we spoke to him in Athens:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I didn’t care about borders. All I cared about was to save my life, seriously. I thought I could find a safe place and find work and that’s all. Maybe in Turkey. Turkey is a good place. But if they find you are illegal in Turkey they will deport you back to Kabul. This is the reason I came here [to Europe].</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Drivers of flight</h2>
<p>So for many, “destination Europe” is not a pull factor in their migration journey. If we want to understand why people on the move are willing to risk their lives in unsafe boats heading for Europe, much more attention needs to be paid to the drivers of flight and how <a href="http://www.fmreview.org/destination-europe/gidron-bueno.html">to offer effective protection</a> to people driven to take such a dangerous journey. </p>
<p>Many people we spoke to had fled from situations of war or conflict, from the threat of terrorist or cult groups, and from kidnapping and torture or violence. Others had fled from persecution by governments, or from being targeted by governments for conscription. </p>
<p>People also fled from family problems, societal ostracism, extreme discrimination and exploitation, as well as from poverty caused by unemployment or the loss of livelihood. Others faced limited prospects of integration and access to education or language difficulties. A woman from Cameroon who we interviewed in Rome expressed this most succinctly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is because of insecurity in our countries that there are many illegal refugees [sic] coming into Europe. Total insecurity is pushing us to migrate … I only want to live in security, I live in fear.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Deterrence doesn’t work</h2>
<p>European leaders are <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-leaders-seek-to-share-responsibility-for-migration-in-malta-50542">now focusing</a> on deterrent policies that try to address the “<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/regions/africa/eu-emergency-trust-fund-africa_en">root causes</a>” of migration. For example, the EU has focused on forging “compacts” with Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal as a means to tie development aid to assistance with <a href="https://euobserver.com/migration/133733">preventing migration</a> to Europe. But such measures are set to fail where they are rooted in an <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration_en">agenda</a> whose goal is to deter future migration to the EU. This is because people on the move are often unaware of deterrent policies – and, even where they are, the drivers of migration are often more pressing than what might happen to them when they arrive. </p>
<p>In our interviews, we found people arriving in the EU without an understanding of what was about to happen to them, and even against their wishes. As one Nigerian woman who we interviewed in Sicily told us, she was forcibly deported by boat from Libya against her will by somebody who she trusted and considered a friend or protector. She was terrified. </p>
<p>Current EU policies are grounded in misplaced assumptions about migration, which lead to policies that are at best ineffective and at worst damaging for people on the move. Myths that migrants have chosen Europe as their “destination” are not only detrimental for people on the move – they also perpetuate anxieties on the part of the communities across Europe who host migrants and refugees. This myth needs to be rejected so that the wider public debate on migration can move beyond a <a href="https://theconversation.com/academics-collaborate-with-artists-to-ask-who-are-we-to-fear-refugees-and-migrants-74404">politics of fear</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Squire receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Leverhulme Trust. This article is based on on research funded by the ESRC Mediterranean Migration Research Programme, Urgent Research Grant number ES/N013646/1</span></em></p>There is an assumption that migrants are pulled to Europe as a ‘destination’ of choice. New research shows that often isn’t the case.Vicki Squire, Reader in International Security, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/761762017-04-25T08:35:57Z2017-04-25T08:35:57ZFact Check: are a million African migrants already on their way to Europe?<blockquote>
<p>Already, I’m informed by very well informed guys and girls who are working on the area, and in the area at the moment, that there’s potentially up to a million migrants already, if not more in the pipeline coming up from Central Africa and the Horn of Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Joseph Walker-Cousins, senior fellow at the Institute for Statecraft and former head of the British Embassy Office in Benghazi, <a href="http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/a01fb416-0d84-4faa-9bb7-a6687bf8eed9">speaking to</a> the House of Lords EU External Affairs Sub-Committee on March 30, 2017.</em></p>
<p>Hard evidence on irregular migration in North Africa is a much sought after commodity; unfortunately, it is also highly unreliable. In its December 2016 assessment of the situation in Libya, the International Organisation for Migration <a href="https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/country/docs/Libya/IOM-Libya-Plan-of-Action-2016-2017.pdf">estimated</a> (IOM) that 425,000 <a href="https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/country/docs/Libya/IOM-Libya-Plan-of-Action-2016-2017.pdf">internally displaced persons</a> were resident in Libya and that “hundreds of thousands” were displaced into neighbouring countries.</p>
<p>Experienced researchers <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/iom-launches-study-migration-trends-across-mediterranean-connecting-dots">tend to be sceptical</a> of official statistics on migrants for good reasons. North Africa is both a destination and a transit region for sub-Saharan migrants. It is also extremely difficult to count migrants because migration tends to be clandestine, with people moving through politically unstable regions.</p>
<p>Further problems with official reports and comments such as those by Joseph Walker-Cousins are that they tend to focus on Libya (and fail to look at the wider regional picture). Findings are based on indirect evidence – information from informants, detentions, returns, and arrivals in Europe – not primary research that employs sound methodologies, as fieldwork in Libya is not possible. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the most likely and most effective barrier to migration – barring an effective policy response from other countries in the region – is death and detention. Thousands of migrants have <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/iom-cites-discovery-more-victims-sahara-among-migrants-bound-libya">died transiting the Sahara</a> and tens of thousands are <a href="https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/africa/libya">“detained” in North Africa</a>. </p>
<p>While the IOM has been able to access some of the detention facilities in Libya, it has not reported on the number of people detained nor their legal status. While <a href="http://icai.independent.gov.uk/html-report/uks-aid-response-irregular-migration-central-mediterranean/">European development agencies</a> are beginning to engage with trans-Saharan migration, very little hard data has emerged from their efforts other than an acknowledgement that conflict and drought in northern Nigeria, Mali, Sudan and the Horn of Africa is pushing people northwards across the Sahara. </p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>We simply do not know how many migrants are “in the pipeline”. Nor have regional governments or the European Union agreed a viable strategy for dealing with the underlying processes driving this movement, as opposed to stopping migrants from reaching Europe. We do know two important facts. First, and as noted in the <a href="https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/country/docs/Libya/IOM-Libya-Plan-of-Action-2016-2017.pdf">2016 IOM study</a>, not all sub-Saharan migrants intend to come to Europe. Second, without an accurate assessment of the situation and serious policy dialogue with transit countries, no resolution to this issue is possible. </p>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p><em>Nando Sigona, deputy director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity, University of Birmingham</em> </p>
<p>I agree with the verdict. The story that a million African migrants are ready or in “the pipeline” to reach Europe from Libya is nothing new and Joseph Walker-Cousins’s claim has previously been aired by other variously informed people. It resurfaces periodically in the media (<a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/libya-one-million-migrants-ready-reach-europe-says-eu-border-chief-1490831">2015</a>, <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/fluechtlinge-frontex-chef-leggeri-sieht-neuen-hotspot-in-aegypten-a-1100138.html">2016</a>, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4365870/Over-ONE-MILLION-migrants-pipeline-Libya.html">2017</a>), but repetition is no proof of validity; rather it is an example of how charts and figures play a significant role in how we understand and debate the so-called refugee crisis. </p>
<p>On the one hand, it encapsulates the power of numbers in firing up public and political debate and sustaining the “crisis mood” that pervades policy responses to boat migration. On the other, it shows the lack of scientific rigour and yet resilience that often characterises the numbers of the “crisis” that circulate so widely in the global media and among policy makers – impermeable to <a href="https://asile.ch/2015/06/21/decryptage-du-fantasme-du-million-de-personnes-pretes-a-sembarquer-pour-leurope/">attempts being</a> made to show how baseless they are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John R Campbell receives funding from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. This article does not reflect the views of the research council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nando Sigona has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. This article does not reflect the review of the research council. </span></em></p>The Conversation asked two experts to look at the data.John R Campbell, Reader in the Anthropology of Africa and Law, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/728232017-02-15T23:48:27Z2017-02-15T23:48:27ZLibya is not Turkey: why the EU plan to stop Mediterranean migration is a human rights concern<p>EU leaders have <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38850380">agreed to a plan</a> that will provide Libya’s UN-backed government €200 million for dealing with migration. This includes an increase in funding for the Libyan coastguard, with an overall aim to stop migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. </p>
<p>Based on the perceived policy success of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal on stopping migrant boats reaching Greece from the west coast of Turkey, known as the <a href="http://frontex.europa.eu/trends-and-routes/eastern-mediterranean-route/">eastern Mediterranean route</a>, this deal is intended to have a similar effect on the central Mediterranean in 2017. </p>
<p>Following the EU-Turkey deal, the central Mediterranean became the main route to Europe with over 200,000 arrivals in Italy.</p>
<p>It should go without saying that Libya is an unsafe country. Most western states impose a travel ban on Libya, which is torn apart by civil war, and has not had an <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38850380">effective central government</a> since 2011.</p>
<p>In December last year, a UN <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-migrants-idUSKBN1422MA?il=0">report</a> stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The situation of migrants in Libya is a human rights crisis. The breakdown in the justice system has led to a state of impunity, in which armed groups, criminal gangs, smugglers and traffickers control the flow of migrants through the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The UN-backed government has tenuous control over the eastern region of the country. It is thought that up to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19744533">2,000 militias</a> are active in Libya and currently rule the coastline. This includes Islamic State and several other jihadist and non-jihadist groups. </p>
<p>The situation in Libya is quite different from Turkey which, despite concerns about crackdowns on dissent following the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36816045">attempted coup in 2016</a>, has a relatively stable government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. </p>
<h2>Libya is not Turkey</h2>
<p>There are two fundamental differences between Libya and Turkey, when it comes to returning migrants. </p>
<p>First is the right to asylum. In Turkey, certain Syrian refugees have the right to apply for humanitarian protection to the Turkish government. The UN’s refugee agency is active within the country, meaning migrants can apply for refugee status there from any country of origin. </p>
<p>While Libya is a signatory to the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html">Geneva Convention on Refugees</a>, there is no asylum process for migrants to apply for asylum either to the government nor to UN. How can asylum and refugee rights be protected in Libya when there’s no ability to seek asylum there in the first place?</p>
<p>Second is the safety of migrants. It is frequently argued that stopping the boats will save migrants’ lives; <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/mediterranean">5,083 people died crossing the Mediterranean in 2016</a> across all routes. But we have no way of knowing how many die before they reach the Mediterranean.</p>
<p>In Libya, we have no official data on migrant deaths. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/30/german-report-libya-abuses-pressure-migrant-flows">A recent report</a> released by the German Embassy in Niger reports that migrants have been executed at prisons run by smugglers. According to the report’s authors: “Witnesses spoke of five executions a week in one prison”. </p>
<p>Research conducted as part of the <a href="http://www.medmig.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/research-brief-destination-europe.pdf">MEDMIG project</a> found that 29% of respondents reported that they had witnessed the death of fellow travellers on their journey. The majority of these episodes occurred in Algeria, Niger and Libya, not while crossing the Mediterranean. </p>
<p>I have made similar findings in my current research. For the past month, I have been in Sicily interviewing migrants who recently arrived from Africa. I have looked in the eyes of young men as they tremble telling me about their experiences in Libya. For them, the nightmare is not the sea, the nightmare is Libya.</p>
<p>One man told me that he lived in Libya with his family when ISIL invaded and took over the region. He watched as ISIL soldiers shot his four year old daughter in Libya. Leaving Libya became an emergency and his family fled northward across the Mediterranean. </p>
<p>Without any way to track migrant deaths in Libya and other African transit countries such as Algeria or Niger it is not possible to know the number of migrant deaths in these countries. Some work has been done on this by the <a href="https://missingmigrants.iom.int/">IOM missing migrants project</a> that reports on en route deaths in Africa, but the numbers are thought to be gross underestimates.</p>
<p>The known levels of abuse and suffering of migrants in Libya suggest that it is possible that the numbers of migrant deaths are similar or possibly even higher, than the number of reported deaths in crossing the Mediterranean. </p>
<p>Beyond the risk of death, <a href="https://unsmil.unmissions.org/Portals/unsmil/Documents/Migrants%20report-EN.pdf">migrants face abuse</a>, torture, labour exploitation, arbitrary detention, starvation, and sexual violence. In some cases, migrants do not choose to cross the sea to Italy, but are <a href="http://gmdac.iom.int/risks-migration-nigeria-iraq">put on boats</a> at gunpoint by captors who no longer want their labour or service. In other cases, migrants may be trafficked from Libya to Italy. </p>
<h2>Alternatives to an EU-Libya deal</h2>
<p>There are alternative ways that the EU could manage this large movement of people. One suggestion, put forward by the <a href="http://www.esiweb.org/">European Stability Initiative</a>, calls for processing claims much faster in Italy by all EU member states, efficiently relocating accepted refugees across Europe, and quickly returning those whose claims are unsuccessful. </p>
<p>You may agree or disagree with this plan, but the point is that there are alternatives that could be more effective than forcing people to stay in Libya. These alternatives require further cooperation from a fragmented EU.</p>
<p>Forcing migrants to stay in Libya is not the same as forcing migrants to stay in Turkey. From the perspective of reducing migrant flows, it is clear that the EU-Turkey deal has been success with a reduction of migrants from <a href="http://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-2016-204311-deaths-2443">57,066 in February to 1,552 in May 2016</a>.</p>
<p>Little is known about the consequences of the EU-Turkey deal on the migrants and refugees that remain in Turkey. My research from 2015 has indicated that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dont-refugees-just-stay-in-turkey-or-greece-we-asked-them-70257">the majority of migrants and refugees</a> want to migrate onwards from Turkey for valid reasons, such as poor living conditions, unemployment, and the desire for safety and security. </p>
<p>Although these are valid concerns, they are not on the same scale of fear of execution, forced labour, or torture experienced by migrants in Libya.</p>
<h2>People smugglers are not the problem</h2>
<p>A key policy argument for keeping migrants in Libya is that it will protect them from falling into the hands of <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21716446-plan-fraught-problems-and-will-be-difficult-enforce-european-union-tries">people smugglers</a>.</p>
<p>But there is ample evidence that attempts to prevent <a href="http://heindehaas.blogspot.it/2015/09/dont-blame-smugglers-real-migration.html">human smuggling do not protect migrants</a>. In my interviews, respondents most feared militia groups that kept them hostage, not migrant smugglers. </p>
<p>Without effective control of militia groups in Libya and a functioning asylum and judicial system protection for migrants is questionable.</p>
<p>It is clear that a solution is needed to assist Italy in bearing the burden of the large number of migrants arriving on its shores. Keeping migrants in Libya does not protect rights, save lives, nor humanely address this large-scale movement of people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72823/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Kuschminder receives funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). </span></em></p>There are fundamental differences between Libya and Turkey, when it comes to returning migrants.Katie Kuschminder, Research Fellow, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.