Why Europe needs to help refugees
“Refugees are not terrorists. They are often the first victims of terrorism.” –Antonio Guterres
It took a picture of a toddler’s lifeless body washed onto the Turkish shores for the world to finally acknowledge the grave situation of refugees fleeing from their countries of origin, possibly the biggest humanitarian crisis in our era. The EU leadership was scheduled to meet on emergency basis as refugee crisis looms over Europe, which the print media says has attained “unprecedented proportions”.
Refugees from the wars in the Middle East are pouring into Europe in order to save their lives. A great number of these refugees are victims of wars, armed conflicts of different nature, sexual assaults and in certain situations also victims of torture. Europe is daily receiving approximately 3,000 refugees, mostly through Turkey into Greece or those trying to reach Germany and Austria via the Hungarian border. The high influx of refugees has thrown a gauntlet to the EU authorities and the member states.
According to the Convention on the Status of Refugees 1951, which is considered to be the centrepiece of international refugee protection today, regards a refugee as someone who is, “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”. The entire European Union is signatory to this convention and other human rights treaties, subsequently binding on all the states, which are sealing their borders and are refusing to host the refugees and urging them to file themselves as asylum-seekers. These people ought to be regarded as refugees and not as migrants since this slight variation drastically changes the entire legal framework they are to be regulated under.
Europe has been envisaged as the centre of human rights law and humanitarian law, which is built around the concept of “….recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. It would be erroneous to treat this situation as that of people fleeing their home countries in order to attain nationality of Europe just because they have a better standard of living. Those risking everything to come to Europe are doing so to escape the horrors and dreadful conditions they were living in, in order to save themselves and their children. The situation is so crucial that parents are throwing themselves in seas (those fleeing on lifeboats) in the hope that their children would have a chance of better living conditions and survival. Desperation has not only washed this three-year-old boy on the shores but also many others including men, women and children, who haven’t made it to the front pages of global newspapers. Furthermore, this has left the Syrians open to all sorts of exploitation and trafficking in the region.
Critically analysing the situation through the lens of international law, it can be argued that borders should not exist in cases of humanitarian crisis. The concept of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) states that sovereignty no longer exclusively protects states from foreign interference; it is a charge of responsibility that holds states accountable for the welfare of their people. Putting this concept in perspective, given the present situation where unarmed citizens are escaping the harsh conditions of their home countries, it can be argued that R2P would not be restricted to states intervening in Syria to stop the brutal human rights violations and war crimes, but rather to pressurise those European states which are refusing to allow a safe passage for these desperate refugees and arresting and assaulting them.
Furthermore, The Dublin Regulation passed in 2013 downplays the security and safeguards which the refugees are supposed to receive according to all the human rights instruments — inclusive of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions, European Convention of Human Rights, several European Council Regulations and Directives, The Convention against Torture ,The Convention on the Rights of Child, along with UN Security Council and UN General Assembly Resolutions — which aim to protect refugees in accordance with recent events, particularly focusing on the protection of Syrian refugees. Member states are thus under a duty to apply the Dublin Regulation in a manner which respects the fundamental rights of refugees. Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, waived this Regulation, stating, “If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for.”
This puts the EU up against an arduous challenge and questions the aspirations of Europe along with human rights and humanitarian law. European countries are relocating the problem instead of solving it. Time has now come for all the states to stop shifting burden and start burden sharing. At present, the onus is on the European Union administration to come up with an affirmative solution — as the Geneva International Centre for Justice stated, “For Europe to deny these rights is an act of hypocrisy from the continent which has championed and pioneered the universality of human rights” — to possibly the biggest calamity after World War II because if they don’t, it’ll consequently lead to the death of these humanitarian legal regimes.
