Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Human Rights, Population

REFUGEES-EU: Divisions Deepen over Distant Camps

Maarten Messiaen

BRUSSELS, Oct 14 2004 (IPS) - Proposals to build centres for asylum-seekers outside the EU will be back on the table at the next European summit in Brussels Nov. 5.

The outgoing European Commission and some European Union (EU) member countries are keeping the controversial move at arm’s length, but experts fear that some member states and the incoming commission will breathe new life into it.

Proposals to set up transit camps for asylum seekers across the Mediterranean provoke outrage among many. But so do images of would-be asylum seekers who land continually on Lampdusa island, Italy’s southernmost outpost.

The Italian, British and German governments argue that thousands of lives would be saved if refugees were intercepted before they reach Europe, in order to separate economic immigrants from genuine asylum seekers.

But the European Association for the Protection of Human Rights (FIDH-AE), an umbrella group of some of Europe’s leading human rights organisations, is appealing to governments and parliamentarians against the creation of camps outside European borders.

“It’s cynical to abuse the deaths of thousands of refugees to justify the creation of camps in North Africa,” FIDH-AE president Dan Van Raemdonck told IPS. “It is illusory to think that those camps would deter people from risking their lives to get across.. The idea serves another purpose, namely to undermine the right to political asylum and to take on a more repressive policy towards refugees.”

FIDH-AE is gathering signatures from parliamentarians, NGOs and civilians for its campaign in time for the Nov. 5 summit. The appeal has been supported so far by15 NGOs and three French members of the European Parliament (MEPs), among them European Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

The Liberal and Green factions of the European Parliament fiercely oppose the processing EU asylum claims in third countries. “One can cautiously refer to them as ‘centres’ or ‘migration portals’, but what we are talking about adds up to nothing less than preventing candidates for asylum from entering the territory of the Union and to access the procedure for asylum; a right which is guaranteed by the Geneva Convention of 1951,” Cohn-Bendit said in a statement released by his office.

It is legally difficult to apply for asylum in a EU country from within Libya, because it is not a signatory to the Geneva convention on refugees. Some EU member states, among them France and Belgium, have used that argument to keep the idea at bay.

Outgoing commissioner for justice and home affairs Antonio Vitorino spoke of “an open mind to these approaches” at a conference in Brussels Oct. 4, but he cautioned that “third countries need to accede and adhere to all relevant legal instruments, in particular the 1951 refugee convention” and that the EU needs to “complete the creation of our common European asylum system.” Such a system will not be in place before 2010, experts say.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first to suggest ‘transit centres’ and ‘regional processing centres’ at a European summit in Thessaloniki in Greece in 2003. His proposals were quickly rejected by most European leaders.

The proposal re-emerged in slightly altered form at an informal meeting of European interior ministers in the Dutch town Scheveningen Oct. 1. German interior minister Otto Schily said processing centres could be a means of stopping illegal immigration in Europe. But again European ministers could not find common ground.

Human rights groups are concerned that the new European Commission, the EU’s executive, will take up the idea after it takes office Nov. 1. Incoming commission president José Manuel Barroso was the architect of a more restrictive asylum policy in Portugal..

Vitorino’s successor Rocco Buttiglione has emerged as an enthusiastic proponent of enhanced border controls, and processing centres in North Africa.

Under pressure from the European parliament Buttiglione has redefined asylum camps as “centres for humanitarian assistance.” A parliamentary committee this week rejected nomination of Buttiglione as European commissioner because MEPs were angered by his support for the camps, by his views on a traditional place for women in the family, and by his stance against homosexuality. It is not clear yet if the unprecedented move really endangers his nomination.

“The idea of building transit camps is still high on the European agenda,” says Claire Rodier of Gisti, a French organisation that specialises in immigration law, and one of the 15 NGOs supporting the appeal against such centres. “Europe wants to dodge its moral and legal obligation to protect refugees by locking up people in camps in North Africa.”

Rodier told IPS that “from what we’ve learned in Sangatte it is clear that even with a secured perimeter it is impossible to deter people from going to the other side.” The Sangatte refugee camp in northern France was closed in December 2002 after it became a source for illegal immigration into Britain.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has opposed the plans. “We fear those camps would undermine the right to asylum and protection,” Diederik Kramers, UNHCR spokesman in Brussels told IPS.

“Those rights are being violated enough as it is,” he said. “The Italian authorities have been airlifting migrants, at least those not from Africa, immediately back to their point of departure. That is a violation of the Refugee Convention to which Italy adheres.”

The UNHCR said the proposed plans are vague. “Does Europe only want to receive intercepted boat refugees in those camps or also refugees which arrive from the African continent?” Kramers asked. “How can you have offshore asylum camps without violating international conventions? Nobody seems to have an answer to those questions.”

The European Commission decided earlier this month to provide 1.2 million dollars to improve the national asylum systems in five North African countries (Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Mauritania). “The goal of this UNHCR project is to turn transit countries into asylum countries,” Kramers said. “So that Africa can do more for refugees than building tent camps and so that in time, there can be more space for asylum outside the industrialised countries. ”