The Interdiction of Asylum Seekers at Sea: Law and (Mal)practice in Europe and Australia (Kaldor Centre Policy Brief, 2017) (original) (raw)
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The refugee, the sovereign and the sea: EU interdiction policies in the Mediterranean PDF Logo
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Price: DKK 25.00 (VAT included) DIIS publications can be downloaded free of charge from www.diis.dk DIIS Working Papers make available DIIS researchers' and DIIS project partners' work in progress towards proper publishing. They may include important documentation which is not necessarily published elsewhere. DIIS Working Papers are published under the responsibility of the author alone. DIIS Working Papers should not be quoted without the express permission of the author. This working paper is an early version of a chapter that will be published as part of Rebecca
2017
The EU-Turkey-Statement proposes to reduce arrival rates and deaths in the sea by subjecting individuals who arrive on Greek islands after 20 March 2016 to fast-track asylum procedures and, in the case of negative decisions, to returns to Turkey. In exchange, EU member states have agreed to take one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every Syrian readmitted from Greece to Turkey. The Statement builds on the deterrent effect of returns and turns high return rates into an 1. This Policy Brief was researched and written in the context of a research project initiated by Ilse van Liempt at the University of Utrecht and financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). We thank project members Annelies Zoomers, Orcun Ulusoy, Harald Glöde and Saima Hassan, as well as Thomas Spijkerboer, Kleio Nikolopoulou, Valeria Hänsel, Lorraine Leete and the anonymous reviewer for their input and critical reflections. Last, but not least, we would like to thank our interview respondents. If you have any comments about this policy brief, please get in touch with the team of authors under
The EU-Turkey-Statement builds on the deterrent effect of returns and turns high return rates into an indicator for a successful border policy. This policy brief examines the impact of the statement’s focus on returns for people seeking asylum in Greece. The analysis draws on interviews with asylum seekers and practitioners, phone interviews with people who were returned from the Greek islands following the EU-Turkey-Statement, as well as on participant observations at refugee camps and inter-agency meetings on Lesbos and Chios in July and August 2017. While people who arrive on the Greek islands have the right to apply for asylum, the statement’s focus on returns has lead to a series of human rights risks there. First, the EU-Turkey-Statement encourages discrimination and detention on grounds of nationality. As a result, access chances for individuals from nationality groups with low recognition rates are deteriorating. Second, delays in asylum procedures and poor living conditions in hotpots have resulted in asylum seekers and prima facie refugees losing hope and concluding that access to asylum in Europe may no longer be possible for them. With no other alternatives at hand, some have felt obliged to accept returns to either Turkey or to their countries of origin. Third, there are important barriers to comprehensive and effective human rights monitoring for people in pre-removal proceedings after negative asylum decisions. As a result, the Greek authorities and the UN are not always in a position to guarantee that the returns from the Greek islands do not violate people’s right to access asylum.
Illicit Return Practices of Irregular Migrants from Greece to Turkey
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Since 2011, in the name of 'humanitarianism' and deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, the legal and political justification delivered by Greece to manage the refugee crisis is pre-emptive interception. Although part of the EU, Greece adopted its own strategy. These practices have also created high risks for migrants generally resulting in non-rescue episodes and push-back practices having lethal consequences to the life of the irregular migrant. Thus, this article provides an analysis of the Greek 'compassionate border work' policy, a practice known as push-back. It is argued that these push-back practices violate international obligations, notably the 'right to life', the 'duty to search and rescue', the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and the principle of <em>non-refoulement</em>.
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The humanitarian refugee crisis in Europe of 2015-2016 has revealed several unfinished elements and shortcomings in current EU policies and approaches to migration, asylum and borders, particularly those applying in southern EU maritime borders and frontier states in the Mediterranean. This book provides a critical examination of the main issues and lessons learned from this crisis and gives an up-to-date assessment of the main policy, legal and institutional responses that have been put in place at the EU level. It further examines the extent to which these responses can be expected to work under the current system of sharing responsibilities among EU member states in assessing asylum applications and ensuring a consistent implementation of EU legal standards that comply with the rule of law and fundamental rights. This report is based on original research and draws upon the existing literature, along with the discussions of a CEPS Task Force that met over six months, under the cha...
IL DIRITTO MARITTIMO, 2022
An extended number of people still risk their life today, while illegally crossing the Mediterranean and/or the Aegean Sea as part of an effort to reach a European country. Border management constitutes a crucial tool for effectively dealing with illegal and irregular migration via sea. However, migration and border management literature is lacking studies that address the genuine drivers of migrant crisis from a (geo)strategic viewpoint, or rely on the theoretical underpinning of border management from that same angle. This article aims to examine the root causes of a specific national security challenge currently faced by Greece and the EU in large part, namely mixed migratory flows in the Aegean Sea. It explores the theoretical (geo)strategic underpinning of border management at the external EU borders in the Aegean Sea; merely desk research was used for the collection/analysis of the data. Relevant results suggest that (geo)strategic considerations provide improved understanding not only of the root causes of seaborne migration that are identified as heightened status of insecurity and extreme poverty in the States of origin, but also of strategy formulation in the field of border management at European and national level (Greek sea borders). Results are discussed in terms of existent (geo)strategic theories and models, with a special focus on the ‘strategic thinking in 3D’ framework, the ‘Heartland’ and ‘Rimland’ theses, as well as topographical features and demographics. The aim is to shed light on strategic thinking and planning in the wider domain of security and provide recommendations to improve the current situation.
The European Union is a political union of democracies which protects human rights and presents itself as a beacon of human rights on the global scene. This Profile reviews the measures the EU has introduced in response to the crisis and highlights the problems they pose from a human rights perspective. Overall, a set of five measures were adopted: (1) improving search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean and the Aegean in order to prevent loss of human lives at sea; (2) initiating military intervention to tackle networks of smugglers; (3) introducing resettlement and relocation quotas to alleviate pressure on the EU member states which serve as entry points (Italy, Greece and Hungary) and from the countries neighbouring Syria (primarily Turkey); (4) creating a common list of safe countries to facilitate and speed up the return of failed asylum seekers and undocumented migrants; and finally (5) strengthening cooperation with countries of origin and transit to readmit migrants and to tighten border controls. Whether the EU will be able to respond to the unfolding crisis by providing international protection to those in need while simultaneously securing its external borders will be a yardstick by which to judge its human rights commitment.