Misery at sea

This year till first week of September, Europe was faced with 381,412 migrant arrivals, mostly from Syria, from the perilous Mediterranean route, which has since last year become a playground of tragedies. Some 2,850 refugees died or were missing while attempting the crossing in perilous rickety boats at mercy of human traffickers.

“What is necessary however, is that those fleeing persecution, conflict or intolerable conditions that threaten their survival should have legal routes of migration access so that they do not need to rely on the exploitative services of smugglers and traffickers. In other words, states need to stop classifying refugees as economic migrants, and need to efficiently and generously process cases of desperate human need,” says Dr Jacqueline Bhabha, a lawyer and professor and research director of the practice of health and human rights at Harvard University.

The stark choices facing refugees from Syria were highlighted by the gut-wrenching photograph of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi whose body had washed up face down on a beach in Turkey after he drowned with his brother and mother in their bid to reach Greece. Antonio Guterres, the head of the UN refugee agency, has called on the European Union to accept up to 200,000 refugees as part of a “mass relocation programme.” However, the bloc is yet to get its member states to agree to give home to 160,000 refugees.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposal of compulsory quotas for 28-nation bloc to accommodate 160,000 refugees is just akin to using a band-aid to prevent a major surgery. His speech in Strasbourg, France, was fairly emotional on the issue of refugees as he sought a unified EU policy on refugees and migrants. The programme will cost the EU $870 million. “It is true that Europe cannot host all the misery of the world — there is an unprecedented number of refugees... But refugees only make up 0.01 per cent of the EU population. In Lebanon, refugees represent 25 per cent of the population in a country with only one-fifth of Europe’s wealth,” he said.

Mr Juncker also proposed a permanent new system of equitable sharing refugees in case of crisis. However, to protect the Schengen Agreement that allows free travel zone across 26 countries with no internal passport control, Mr Juncker also called for a European border force and coastguards to patrol the external frontiers of the bloc.

Financially-strapped Europe is struggling with implementation of these policies and despite support of the European Parliament that on Thursday voted in favour of the non-binding resolution, the fate of Mr Juncker’s proposals will be decided by the bloc’s home and law ministers in Brussels on Monday.

Peter Sutherland, UN Special Representative for Migration and Development, called for a much fairer distribution of the refugee burden within Europe, as only five European countries have taken 72 per cent of all refugees. Germany is bearing the brunt, it expects to receive up to 800,000 migrants by the end of the year.

There is already a lot of dissent over Mr Juncker’s proposals, with the Visegrad Group — an alliance of Central European nations of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — rejecting the binding quotas outright. The meeting of Visegrad Four foreign ministers on Friday in Prague with their German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier did not manage to change their stance.

Romania too has refused to take more refugees under the quota. The UK, Ireland and Denmark are not bound to take part in the compulsory refugee quota as they have opt-outs on the issue. Also, reeling under the migrant influx, Greece, Italy and Hungary do not have to take part in the scheme. UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who is facing criticism over refusal to accept more refugees from Syria, criticised the Juncker formula and described it as counterproductive. He has agreed to accept 20,000 refugees from Syria by 2020. “If all the focus is on redistributing quotas of refugees around Europe, that won’t solve the problem, and it actually sends a message that it is a good idea to get on a boat and make that perilous journey,” Mr Cameron said.

Hungary has started to deploy armed forces along the border to control the flow of migrants. It completed a razor-wire barrier along its 175 km border with Serbia last month, but it has been ineffective. Right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has spoken of threat to Christian values, is now constructing another fence, 4 metres in height.

The spectre of ISIS infiltration into Europe using the refugee route has long been an issue highlighted by right-wing politicians in Europe. British politician Nigel Farage raised the issue in European Parliament on Thursday, saying: “ISIS are now using this route to put their jihadists on European soil. We must be mad to take this risk with the cohesion of our societies.”

The EU nations are calling for a discussion on the migrant crisis, as, according to Poland’s Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, “the situation would get out of control if more waves of migrants arrived in Europe.” Mr Juncker also called for a “more powerful” EU foreign policy under Federica Mogherini and a “diplomatic offensive” in Syria and Libya. He also suggested an emergency trust fund of $1.8 billion to address the crisis in Sahel and Africa.

Overwhelmed by refugees, EU states are squabbling over the short-term solution. There is no consensus on the long-term strategy vital for stemming the crisis. This was evident in the responses to patrolling in the Mediterranean to prevent refugee deaths, with the UK and Italy voicing their opposition.

“There are strong centrifugal pressures politically in Europe at the moment that are making unified European positions on issues that are politically contentious very difficult. Part of this is a major outcome of the eurozone financial crisis and we have seen this in divergent responses to the Greek economic crisis and we are now seeing great dissent in Europe on the issue of migrants and it’s very difficult to see that a unified approach can successfully be applied to either of these problems,” says senior fellow for land warfare Ben Barry at London’s IISS think-tank. There is no short-term solution to the problem facing Europe. It is a complex one and requires a long-term strategy, warns Mr Barry.

“There is the arc of instability that stretches from Syria through Iraq, the Levant, Egypt, much of North Africa, the Sahel down to as far as the northern Nigeria.”

“We are seeing a great wave here and this breaking wave is going to take a long time to break and reach the beach because globalisation has created immense economic advantages, there are many parts of the world where people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of globalisation. But the other thing that globalisation has done, particularly with the spread of mass media, electronic media and social media, is that if you are poor you are likely much more aware of the fact and much more aware that there are people a plane journey away that who are much wealthier than you and whose open societies appear to be wealthier themselves, as in the case of Europe… We can’t put this genie back in the bottle. So, the strategic tension between the haves and have-nots and the visibility to the have-nots of what the haves have, can only increase and it is going to be a very very difficult problem to deal with,” he says.

“The long term approach is for Europe and the United states, the rich world, to do what it can to help improve the conditions of the third world — help to reduce the conflicts, and the drivers of conflicts that have spun out this human wave of misery.”