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Matthew Vella
In Europe, the number of new asylum applications has dropped sharply, according to the UN’s High Commission for Refugees. According to official statistics, western European countries are receiving the lowest numbers since 1997. In the first half of 2004, more than 26,000 people applied for asylum in western Europe, a decrease of 20 per cent over 2003.
Such statistics seem unable to allay the fears of a Maltese society which apparently does not find it hard to give its xenophobic fears a rationale, to perpetuate fears which at most are debatable. Myths of cultural infiltration, increasing crime patterns, or loss of job security due to the influx of asylum seekers into the island over the last years, have so far proved to be just what they are: myths, with too little evidence to suggest the 1,500 plus arrivals in 2004 threaten the Maltese social fabric, despite a clear strain on human resources, given that there is no solid reception strategy for asylum seekers save for the detention system.
As the UN’s global appeal for 2005 states, despite the decrease in numbers, asylum seekers remain one of the EU’s most sensitive of subjects. The UNHCR itself is developing a regional strategy for the Mediterranean, where renewed focus is being place on the plight of asylum seekers who risk their lives by crossing the Mediterranean sea over from the North African coast.
In Malta however, the asylum seeker risks becoming an even greater pariah, and possibly an emerging scapegoat in times of economic slowdown. However, the notion that refugee movements bring insecurity and economic hardship does carry weight when those refugees receive inadequate assistance and are obliged to pursue survival strategies that impact negatively on local communities.
The asylum seeker will remain represented in certain segments of the media as a burden on the island’s finances despite the fact that no official figures have been issued by the Ministry for Home Affairs, the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity and the Armed Forces on the spend to administer the detention system.
Today’s refugee phenomenon is however different to that of yesteryear. The end of the Cold War brought with it the end of certain dictatorships in Africa and more civil and communal violence, as well as the end of funds from Western states keen to assist African allies in the fight against communism.
Today, many of the world’s largest refugee populations are currently found in countries that have little geopolitical significance and have been bypassed by the process of globalization. These same countries have been confronted with a wide range of political, economic and social problems: high population growth and unemployment, declining levels of official development assistance, environmental degradation, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Most of the people who abandon their homes to escape from persecution and armed conflict either remain in their own country as internally displaced people, or seek asylum as refugees in a neighbouring or nearby state. In other words, they remain in their region of origin. Between 1992 and 2001, for example, developing countries accommodated on average more than 70 per cent of the world’s refugee population. At the beginning of 2002, around nine million of the world's 12 million refugees were to be found in the world's two least developed continents: Africa and Asia.
Immigration is not welcomed when it involves large numbers of people who enter the country in an irregular or illegal manner and who appear to bring little financial or social capital with them, which is how asylum seekers are perceived by the Maltese. But this is just the thin veneer of racial and religious prejudice. Are the Maltese really concerned about migrants who lose their passports, or about the fact that they hail from African and Arab countries, and tend to be Muslims?
But apart from the apparent preciousness of Maltese nationality, few understand that the hundreds of asylum seekers landing on our shores arrive by mistake, their original itinerary having been to go to Italy and then travel into the European mainland. Thousands of Eritreans, Ethiopians and Sudanese are now waiting on the Libyan coasts with a USD1,000 ticket to Europe. Despite being a state party to the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, which means that Libya is bound not to return anyone to a country where they face serious human rights violations, the north African country has violated this obligation on several instances in 2004, according to Amnesty International. This is exemplified by two incidents of deportation of hundreds of Eritreans back to their country of origin in July and August 2004, where many of those returned to Eritrea are now believed to be detained incommunicado in a secret prison where conditions are harsh.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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