Ayse Abdurrahman, who is originally from Somalia, drowned after the boat he travelled on capsized off the Turkish coast near the town of Didim. He was trying to reach Europe. Two women from Eritrea and Ethiopia died of starvation on their journey from Libya to Italy. A 25 year-old man from Gambia was found frozen in an undercarriage of an airplane heading from Gambia to Brussels.
The List of Deaths
UNITED, a pan-European network fighting against nationalism, racism, fascism, and supporting migrants and refugees, published last week the list of deaths featuring 13,621 names of people from all over the world who died or committed suicide while trying to get to Europe or in the European refugees’ centers. UNITED blames the EU immigration policy for these deaths.
“13,621 documented deaths have occurred as migrants come face to face with the Fatal Realities of Fortress Europe. Fleeing their country of origin, they seek a life in Europe that does not necessarily become the safe place they hoped it would be; they are exposed to the militarization of borders, deaths in custody, detention conditions, deportation procedures, and the psychological suffering inflicted by the asylum and immigration system”, say UNITED representatives in an e-mail calling for action during the Refugee Day, which will be celebrated worldwide on the 20th of June.
There is no such a thing as a climate refugee….from a legal point of view
According to UNITED, many of these people are fleeing to Europe due to the poverty caused by climate change in their home countries. Environmental conditions are the root cause of social, political, and economic factors behind forced migration. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warns that human-driven climate change is set to become the biggest cause of population displacement in the near future.
Here is how the situation looks like from the perspective of the Environmental Justice Foundation:
Nonetheless, at present the idea of a climate refugee and environmental displacement doesn’t exist from a legal point of view. The Geneva Convention, which defines a refugee and the rights they are entitled to, considers a fear of persecution due to only social, political and religious factors. Therefore UNITED is calling for a new convention which defines the status of environmentally displaced persons and outlines their rights. The network asks people to apply pressure on their governments to work in order to give the climate refugees a legal status.
“The human face of climate change can be clearly seen in patterns of migration flow. The List of Deaths clearly illustrates that at least 4.426 of these deaths are of migrants originating from the Sahel, a region of Sub-Saharan Africa devastated by two major droughts over the past 40 years, causing famine and civil war”, argues the letter drafted by UNITED to be sent to the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the national parliaments.
Breaking into Europe 2 years ago – how was it viewed from the inside of the European borders
United’s call for action reminded me of “Breaking into Europe”, a radio workshop I moderated two years ago in the European Parliament during the European Youth Media Days. It was an event dedicated to young EU journalists. The workshop happened in the same time with the European Council in October of 2008, where the Heads of States and governments of the EU discussed and sealed the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum. You can listen to final radio show here. You will have the opportunity to hear Simon Busuttil, Maltese Member of the European Parliament, Philippe de Bruycker, lawyer specialized in European Immigration and Asylum Law, and Gjovalin Nonaj, Albanian accordionist and ex-illegal immigrant in Belgium. Here is an extract from it that might spur your curiosity:
“We want to open legal routes as a way of preventing and discouraging people from taking the illegal route. If someone comes to Europe because he or she needs international protection than that is possible in any case. Europe cannot be free for all”, Simon Busuttil, Maltese Member of the European Parliament.
This also reminded me of something a Maltese friend was telling me during the same event: “We have almost 500,000 people in the whole country of Malta. Imagine what would be the impact of 10,000 immigrants coming yearly by boat to Malta from Africa. It’s like millions of immigrants coming yearly in Germany”.
If you’re interested in the life and condition of the refugee camps, please have a look at the photo reportage of Marios Stavrou here.
Picture credits:
"Alexandre Marchand" / http://www.youthmedia.eu, CC-License(by-nc)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/deed.en
I saw “End of the line” movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1176727/
So many fisherman from Africa want get to Europe. We stealing their jobs.
Thanks for the link Jan, I will try to see the movie.
It’s always easy, as UNITED does, to blame “EU immigration policy” insinuating that if to just ‘take’ all people in that want to cross the border this would be a solution to any problem.
We shouldn’t forget that many illegal immigrants that ‘make it’ just become victims of various mafias that exploit them. The real problems lie within the countries that ‘send’ them, be this poverty out of various reasons, poor governance or simply overpopulation. Also there are still very unrealistic assumptions about possibilities for their future life among many that try this route.
The solution to the immigration problem is sustainable development and fair trade policies.
I am not sure if UNITED is trying to insinuate we should take them all in Stefan, I think it’s obvious to everybody that this is unrealistic. From what I understand they are militating now for a legal status for the climate change refugees and probably more humane conditions in the immigration centers the illegal immigrants are held in while their status is being checked and cleared. Do you think Europe and the other nations should introduce an international legal status for climate change refugees?
The call for a new convention granting refugee status to environmentally displaced persons is an attempt to push an old problem through the kitchen door. Climate changes have an impact on scale of migration, however the causes of migration are usually mixed. Unless we talk of an inhabitant of a flooded tiny coral atol, we can not say for sure he is a climate refugee, economic refugee or conflict refugee. (Somalia with its drought, poverty, war and unstable economic situation is a good example). Creating new definitions will not substitute for a cohesive immigration policy.
I do agree with you Robert that in many cases it is complicated to define climate change refugees and separate them from economic of conflict refugee since climate change is a cause of these factors.
I’m sure many people know about Mellila and Ceuta, here is an article by the Guardian’s investigative journalist Nick Davies: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/17/melilla-migrants-eu-spain-morocco. He argues that “To protect our jobs, the EU authorises Melilla to be a theatre of cruelty.”
Robert put it right, ‘climate refugee’ doesn’t make sense and adds another legal fiction to our politicised legal system. I doubt however that there will (or even can) be a ‘cohesive immigration policy’ without sticking it to sustainable development policies. Everybody should be aware that proper development aid, the fight against climate change etc. are the preconditions to solve the refugee crisis. It wont be solved either with higher border fences or blind activism a la “No person is illegal”.
While UNITED is right in criticising conditions in many detention centres, the real problem however is the sheer number of refugees that overwhelms the capabilities of countries like Greece, Malta and even Italy.
I think “climate refugees” is a very real social concept, but gving it legal status would probably be very complicated.
The refugee politics is a big shame for the European Union, and it is really scaring to see how quitck and efficient the union is in finding ways to deal with unwanted refugees, cooperating with dictatorships etc. compared to how slow it is with legislation that aims at improving people’s lives.
What must be done is:
1. A much more liberal dealing with refugees on Europe borders.
2. Much more ways to emigrate to Europe legally.
The thing is that everyone who wants to come will come, and everyone loses if he or she has to travel illegally.
I strongly recommend Davies’ article that Giedre suggested, if you want to form an opinion on the EU’s immigration policy.
But it’s not just the EU.
In the US, the same debate has been going on about immigrants entering the country via the 3000 km (of which more than 550 km fenced) long border with Mexico.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126887021
Building fences doesn’t help. I guess social and economical inequality will always make people die trying.
@Giedre: Thanks for the link Giedre, I will definitely read Davies’s article. I had the chance to meet him at a conference and the guy is quite a character. I loved his style!
@Stefan: I know Greece, Malta and Italy were trying hard to get other EU countries on board to share the burden of illegal immigration, I am not sure how much they managed to do that in the last 2 years. Also, I don’t know if you got to listen to the radio show I am mentioning in the post but there the exact issue you are talking about is tackled.
@Daniel: What do you understand by the “much more liberal dealing with refugees” Daniel? Do you think that is appropriate during the climate of crisis we are all in?
@Hieke: I do agree that building fences doesn’t help. I remember when people in my home country (Romania) were risking their lives trying to cross illegally the Western border to make it to the democratic countries. I am happy to see that those times have passed for my country and sad that some people are still going through that.
Hi Carmen,
Very interesting topic and an urgent one on top of that.
Personally I believe that the pressure from outside Europe might be a good incentive to once again look at what the developed world is doing. We can’t keep ignoring those that want to get in. Whether a majority of the Europeans is ‘pro’ this influx is questionable, especially since we are politically making a move to the right.
Dear Johan,
I don’t think we are ignoring those that want to get in. I personally believe we are very aware of them. It is just that we don’t have everything in place to deal with them: proper legislation, proper burden sharing among the EU Member States, proper conditions in the refugee centers, proper training for the staff of these centers, etc. In the same time, we don’t have to forget Europe will need labour force from outside its borders since we are all growing old and we are not having enough children to be able to support our pensions. But then again, we are still not ready to integrate these people into our legal labour force, especially now when the EU citizens are losing jobs.
By a “much more liberal” way of dealing with refugees, I mean that each individual’s human rights should be higher valued than the EU’s political right to decide who can or can not live in the union.
That means, first of all that each refugee has the right to apply for asylum and to juridical assistance when doing this. This process should be done <u>within</u> the borders of the European Union, and nowhere else - the European Union is responsibility for the treatment of anyone who applies for asylum here.
The EU should not allow the kind of treatment that Greece or Malta give refugees - if any EU member country is not able to treat refugees according to the Unions standards, the Unions should take over this responsibility.
The Dublin convention should be… reformed. What is the justice in sending someone who wants to apply for asylum in Sweden to Greece, just because this is the point where he or she entered the European Union? As long as that system lasts, we will have trucks travelling through the continent with humans hidden inside, dying from suffocation. And that is not the Europe I want to see.
The Europe should also perceive itself as a democracy, and refrain from striking deals with dictatorships like Libya.
I do not have an idea - can I say as European that I do not want them to came here (as partly it is truth, as I believe that the work should be in place you are, if it is possible) But form the other point I understand why people stream.
What do you feel and think..?
Dear Daniel and Aija, sorry for replying to you with such a delay. I took a few days off and went away from Belgium.
@Daniel: I think Greece and Malta want the EU and other Member States to take over the responsibility and that EU overall doesn’t want to do that. That is why Malta went on and on with the burden sharing issue during the European Council where the Pact on Immigration and Asylum was discussed. I do agree with you that human rights should be on the first place, but then what comes to my mind is what Nick Davies was writing in the article Giedre recommended in her comment: if we treat them “good”(by making sure they are not mistreated and their human rights are entirely respected) more and more would keep coming. What do you think about this?
@Aija: It is very difficult to be able to say how we should deal with this issue which is not new and I think will keep on happening in the world.
Really good post! Thx for sharing!