International leaders have been meeting in Paris to craft policies that stop the human traffic. Pushing the border further south is not the answer on its own
Nigeria’s President Mahamadou Issoufou, Chad’s President Idriss Deby, France’s Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Angela Merkel were among the seven leaders who met to discuss the EU’s migrant crisis in Paris on Monday. Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images
Monday 28 August 2017 19.36 BST
Migration remains at the heart of Europe’s political and social crisis. Instability in Africa and elsewhere, wars, persecution, poverty, demographic trends and the ancient human urge to seek a better life in safer, more prosperous regions, all mean that this reality is not about to change. Two years after more than a million people made their way to Europe in the largest arrival of migrants from outside the continent in its history, European institutions and governments still struggle to find solutions. Even when sound policies are crafted, such as relocation sharing, to alleviate the pressure on “frontline” states, implementation lags far behind.
On Monday the leaders of several European and African states – the UK not among them – met in Paris to try to forge more unity on how to address both the humanitarian urgency and the root causes of migration. The talks centred on stemming migration flows closer to their source. This makes sense, but only if the rights of migrants who need urgent protection are respected. Europe’s strategies must not amount to pushing the problem further away from its shores, rather than trying to solve it.
The tragedies in the Mediterranean are far from over, but now the hazards of migration are shifting further south into the deserts of the Sahara and the Sahel. The EU is pushing African governments to clamp down on traffickers’ networks and to tighten control over key border areas. Conditions have been attached to the disbursement of development aid, particularly to encourage repression of traffickers. The EU has pledged €640m for such programmes in Niger alone, with some positive results. The International Organization for Migration notes a steep drop in the numbers of people crossing from Niger into Libya since 2016.
These regions are thus becoming Europe’s new frontier against sub-Saharan migrants and refugees travelling towards the central Mediterranean. In 2016, more than 160,000 people took this route to Italy, mainly on makeshift boats. A thinktank, International Crisis Group, estimates that people-smuggling through Libya generates annual revenues of between $1bn and $1.5bn.
Yet blocking off routes does little to prevent others from being used, sometimes in even more dangerous circumstances. Recently there have been reports of traffickers abandoning their human cargo in the middle of the desert. This happens when they fear arrest by local security forces, or if vehicles break down. Migrants are then left stranded in the sand without water, food or shelter, in blisteringly hot temperatures. The overall number of deaths is hard to quantify, just as it is in the sea, but observers believe such brutality has become more frequent. UN agencies and NGOs have been sounding alarm bells.
In the two years since the EU launched its “agenda on migration”, there have been results to show, but the overall picture remains a bleak one. After the Balkan route was cut by the EU-Turkey agreement in 2016, equally controversial efforts have focused on working with the Libyan coastguard, and even on curbing the work of NGO ships that have been accused of creating a pull factor.
Europe is in effect externalising its migration problem to African countries, after partly outsourcing it to Turkey. Yet as migration routes shift, the human tragedies simply go with them.
The only genuinely sustainable and humane solution would be to create safe, legal pathways for asylum seekers, but this has been largely shunned by nervous politicians, as is happening in Italy. Helping to stabilise and develop countries that are haemorrhaging their youth for lack of economic opportunity or basic security unquestionably requires a long-term effort. But stemming the movement of people by trying to build more barriers means that Europe’s policies are failing to match its stated values. Insisting that African governments or militias return desperate people to places where their lives are in danger is even worse.
Sending back migrants who are not entitled to asylum is a necessary policy. But it must be done in a humane fashion, after due process, and only when the policy is sustainably safe. The idea of establishing EU “hotspots” in highly dangerous places like Libya must be abandoned. Meanwhile, closer attention must be paid to what is unfolding in the desert, and resources put into rescue operations. The fact that many of these tragedies are unfolding far from European eyes does not justify inaction.
Source – The Guardian
African and European leaders agree action plan on migration crisis
Leaders of seven nations seek to combat people-smugglers turning Mediterranean into ‘cemetery’
Emmanuel Macron welcomes the president of Chad, Idriss Déby Itno, at the Élysée Palace. Photograph: Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images
Patrick Wintour and Kim Willsher in Paris
Monday 28 August 2017 20.24 BST
Seven African and European leaders have met in Paris to try to build a new relationship aimed at cutting migration into Europe from northern Africa in return for aid.
On Monday, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain agreed to help Chad and Niger with border control to stem the flow of migrants through Libya and across the Mediterranean.
The EU has struggled to agree a coherent solution to the influx of people fleeing war, poverty and political upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, and the crisis is testing cooperation between member states.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the meeting, said afterwards that the issue was a “problem that concerns us all and that cannot be solved without us all”.
Sitting alongside the leaders of the six other countries, Macron added that the migration crisis was a “challenge for the European Union and the African Union” that needed to be approached with “solidarity, humanity and efficiency”.
He added the seven leaders had agreed a “short-term plan of action” that would address as a matter of urgency the people-smugglers who he said had turned the Mediterranean into a “cemetery”.
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The mini-summit in Paris provided a chance for the major European powers to coordinate their Libyan policy after individual countries, especially France and Italy, started to mount separate initiatives to create political unity in Libya.
Macron also wants the EU to offer an extra €60m (£56m) to help African countries deal with asylum seekers who have returned from Europe and to prevent further migration flows.
Although the number of people reaching Italy from Libya by sea dropped by nearly 70% in July and August compared with the same months last year, it is felt the numbers could easily rise again without further measures.
There has been a small increase in people travelling from Morocco to Spain – a point of concern for the Spanish government, which is dealing with sensitive public opinion in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the country this month.
The fall in the number of refugees leaving Libya raises questions about the management of the makeshift camps where those still seeking to reach Europe are being held, either before attempting the perilous Mediterranean crossing or after being turned back by the Libyan coastguard.
Fayez al-Sarraj, the prime minister of Libya’s UN-backed government, used the meeting to ask for more support to fight trafficking and monitor his country’s southern border.
Idriss Déby Itno, the president of Chad, said “poverty and a lack of education” were the main drivers of migration to Europe. “These have to be taken into account by all the European Union and African Union countries,” he added.
The four European leaders attending the summit were the Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, and Macron.
The UK – despite leading the military engagement that led to the fall of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the subsequent power vacuum – was not among the attendees, a possible sign of Britain’s gradual marginalisation before Brexit.
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, visited Tripoli last week, but the bulk of the diplomatic work on reaching a political solution in Libya has been left to the former colonial power, Italy, or to France.
The political crisis in Italy over migration continues, with clashes at the weekend in Rome between migrants and police over living conditions.
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The total number of people who reached Italy from Africa between January and 23 August this year was 98,072, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency – a fall of only 7,000 from the same period last year.
But this small drop masks a collapse of more than 70% in the number of migrants reaching Italy in July and August. The IOM figures show that 14,177 African migrants reached Italy by sea between 1 July and 20 August, compared with 45,000 over the same period last year. The figures for August alone are likely to show a fall of more than 75% on August 2016.
But the IOM estimates the number of people reaching Spain from Africa is starting to increase, exceeding 8,300 by 9 August, higher than the total number to reach Spain during the whole of 2016.
Although the Italian government is taking some credit for the sudden decline in the number of people reaching its shores, the fall appears to precede implementation of its tough measures, which include a restrictive code of conduct for NGO ships patrolling outside Libyan coastal waters, as well as stronger efforts by the Libyan coastguard to turn back the smugglers’ rafts. It is possible that changes in the power dynamics in key Libyan ports had already made it more difficult for the smuggling networks to operate.
The Italian government has been providing help to the political leadership in key ports such as Sabratha, west of Tripoli, and this in turn could be seen as an incentive to local militia to forgo people-smuggling in return for western grants.
But the decline in numbers reaching Europe may lead to tens of thousands becoming stranded in camps in north Africa, with little oversight by the weak Libyan government.
In a further sign that European leaders are starting to look at the root cause of the crisis, the Italian interior minister, Marco Minniti, met 14 Libyan mayors for a second time on Saturday to talk to them about their needs, including funds to ensure there were economic alternatives to human trafficking.
Source – The Guardian