‘The future EU must uphold the right to asylum in Europe’
Children’s charities Save the Children and UNICEF are among the joint signatories of a statement calling on the European Union to commit to the future safety of migrants including, critically, children.
Around 100 organisations including charities and human rights organisations say they are ‘alarmed’ by what they see as increasing attempts by the EU to ‘evade their asylum responsibilities’ by outsourcing processing and other risk procedures.
“To ensure that refugees can access protection, states must guarantee the right to seek and enjoy asylum and uphold their commitments to the international refugee protection system – this obligation applies to all EU Member States under Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, it says.
“Yet, the recent and increasing attempts by the EU and its Member States to evade their asylum responsibilities by outsourcing asylum processing and refugee protection risk undermining the international protection system. The undersigned human rights and humanitarian organisations are alarmed by these developments and urge the EU and its Member States to safeguard the right to territorial asylum in Europe.
“These attempts must be seen in the context of parallel containment efforts that seek to stem departures and prevent the arrival of asylum seekers to EU territory through partnership agreements with third countries, with little to no attention to the human rights records of those authorities. Over the past years, the European Commission has continued bypassing public or parliamentary scrutiny and EU legislative frameworks as it concludes ever more controversial and untransparent deals with non-EU countries, throwing at them large sums of money with no genuine human rights safeguards or monitoring mechanisms, with the aim to contain and deter migration and onwards movement of refugees toward the EU at seemingly any human cost.”
It concludes: “Civil society organisations have been clear about their serious concerns with regards to the recently agreed reforms under the Pact on Migration and Asylum. Nonetheless, the transfer of asylum seekers outside of EU territory for asylum processing and refugee protection is not provided for in the Pact, nor within current EU law. After the EU and Member States have spent close to a decade attempting to reform the EUā€™s asylum system, they should now focus on implementing it with a human rights centred approach that prioritises the right to asylum per EU law and fundamental principles of international refugee law to which they remain bound. T
“They should not, mere weeks after the reform has passed, waste further time and resources on proposals that are incompatible with European and international law.”
The full statement and list of signatories is available here.
