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Matthew Vella
The EU is shipping out, despatching member states’ patrol boats to secure its Mediterranean borders. The target: illegal immigration setting sail from Libya’s 1,100-mile long coastline.
For Malta the new maritime operations to be coordinated by Frontex, the EU’s external borders management agency, are the latest form of deterrent which it hopes will see less asylum seekers landing on its coasts in ramshackle vessels. Patrolling the waters of the Mediterranean, where the organised criminal network of human traffickers operate, is the latest step in closing off the sea borders to illegal migrants.
It’s a proposal that has long been touted by the Maltese government. Shortly after EU accession, faced with an increasing inflow of irregular migration, the government lodged an application to host Frontex in a bid at gaining more influence on securing the Mediterranean borders. It also toyed with the proposal of setting up an EU coastguard, based on a report authored by the international relations expert Stephen Calleya.
But deterrence is also expected to have its consequences. The border patrols, essentially physical interception on high seas and within territorial waters, are feared will be indiscriminate in catching both irregular economic migrants, as well as persons in need of international protection. “A high price to pay for improved immigration control,” as UNHCR spokesperson Neil Falzon says.
Many of the illegal routes undertaken by migrants are also travelled by asylum seekers in need of international protection. Mixed flows, carrying both economic migrants and asylum seekers, are the phenomenon which countries like Malta want to battle, by making it harder for illegal passage to take place.
But while border control remains essential in the fight against international crime, including human trafficking, it is also a fact that asylum seekers – faced with mandatory entry visa requirements or sanctions on carriers transporting undocumented passengers – are still left with no choice but to undertake illegal entry in their bid to seek protection.
“Tighter migration controls are often self-defeating in that migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees are increasingly turning to more sophisticated human smuggling networks capable of circumventing these measures, resulting in the careless exploitation of the migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees themselves,” Falzon said.
That is so far, the greatest unknown in the equation of border controls. If irregular migrants are stopped midway through their journey, what happens to those seeking international protection? What happens to asylum seekers prevented from arriving to safe borders? Current state practice, with Italy and Malta having already refused access to fishing vessels carrying migrants it saved at sea, suggests that what they expect from the patrols is to send asylum seekers back before entering territorial waters.
The suspicion is that states like Malta want to close off the opportunities for migrants presenting more asylum claims. The principle of non-refoulement obliges states not to return refugees or asylum seekers to countries were their life or freedom is threatened. By blocking migrants from effectively reaching the state’s borders in the first place, that obligation is never kicked into action.
Stephen Calleya however claims the assumption is premature. “It is my understanding that the EU intends to dispatch teams of national experts who will assist in interviewing and identifying where illegal migrants are coming from so that legitimate asylum seekers and refugees receive the support they are entitled to.”
But the UNHCR states that if interception measures do not take into consideration an assessment of protection needs of asylum seekers, they risk violating the principle of non-refoulement. “Seeking asylum is a fundamental human right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as such is a matter of international law and obligations, not a matter of a State’s discretionary immigration policy,” Falzon says.
The crucial aspect is whether Libya, a main transit state for refugees and migrants from central and east Africa, can be enticed into allowing EU border patrols into its territorial seas. The Ministry for Home Affairs says that if Libyan cooperation is available, then the patrol exercise will be on the same lines as the ‘Hera’ exercise, which will be coordinated by Frontex off the coast of the Canary Islands. “If the patrols will be in international waters, the exercise will act as deterrent.”
But the patrols still have come with no guarantees of how refugees can still be allowed the right to seek protection to which they are entitled if they do not have access to a fair and effective procedure that evaluates their claims. “In practice, this implies a commitment to the non-refoulement obligation,” Falzon says, which now stands to be endangered by the moving of border controls away from state frontiers.
The big issue piling up on the EU and countries like Malta however is a security crisis that has been mainly brought up by the September 11 attacks. As Calleya acknowledges, prior to September 11 there was no mechanism to deal with migrant traffic before NATO’s Operation Active Endeavour, which started in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks in the form of patrols across the eastern Mediterranean.
“We have a situation in the Mediterranean where there is a security vacuum,” Calleya says, who hails the EU joint patrol as a positive development. “In any case the patrols offer everyone concerned with a more structured approach to the humanitarian disaster we have all been witnesses to in recent years across the Mediterranean. Of course once the patrols commence it will be essential to monitor their activity to ensure that the maximum effort is made to safeguard human lives – this has to be the bottom line of the policy.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
Links:
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/07/23/t12.html
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