Migrants: “EU’s resettlement proposal is a good start but
remains woefully inadequate” – UN expert
GENEVA (15 May 2015) – The United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, expressed both
hope and disappointment at the new European Agenda on Migration unveiled by the
European Commission for dealing with Europe’s migration crisis.
“The EU’s resettlement proposal is good in principle but
woefully inadequate in its scale,” the human rights expert said. The plan
includes quotas for the resettlement of refugees, an initiative that Mr.
Crépeau has been calling for since September 2014.
“The number of resettlement places initially envisaged
seems utterly insufficient,” he stressed. “20.000 places in the EU regional
block is not an adequate response to the current crisis which in 2014 saw over
200,000 irregular migrants – a majority of whom were asylum seekers – arrived
in Europe by boat.”
The Special Rapporteur recalled that over 60,000
irregular migrants-many of whom mare aslyum seekers- have already been rescued
this year. “For a continental union of over 500 million inhabitants, 20,000
persons represent 0.00004% of its population,” he stressed.
The EU also proposed a relocation plan for the asylum
seekers who enter the common territory in order to relief frontline States. “It
is good that a mandatory EU-wide relocation system, with an appropriate
distribution key, will be presented for adoption by all EU member states,” he
said.
“However, such a system must be based on the wishes of the asylum
seekers, an increase in mobility throughout the common EU territory, and on
numbers of relocated asylum seekers that actually match the number of arrivals.”
The expert noted that frontline states have shouldered
the overall responsibility of dealing with the irregular migrants that arrive
in Europe for far too long.
“If properly implemented, this additional support
may assist frontline states to effectively safeguard the human rights of
migrants and asylum seekers who arrive irregularly by boat, inter alia through
more mobility within Europe,” the expert said.
“Moreover,” Mr. Crépeau pointed out, “the new EU plan on
migration did not acknowledge or address this issue yet jobs continue to be
available for low skilled migrants in European underground labour markets,
where unscrupulous employers are exploiting them.
The EU continues to turn a
blind eye to a key pull factor for many low skilled migrants.” In his view,
“the EU’s focus only on highly-skilled migrants is disappointing.”
“The EU must acknowledge and adequately respond to the
needs of its low-wage labour market,” he said. “I call on European and national
authorities to quickly both open many more legal migration avenues for migrants
at all skills levels and firmly repress labour exploitation through the
effective implementation of the employer sanction directive and the
strengthening of labour inspections.”
“I thus urge the EU to take the next step in opening
creative channels for regular migration – for both migrants and asylum seekers
–, thereby ensuring that they no longer have to risk their lives crossing the
Mediterranean or be exploited by unscrupulous employers,” he said.
Responding to Monday’s EU briefing with the UN Security
Council on the issue of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the UN expert
insisted that security and defence policy options, such as destroying boats,
constitute only a very short-sighted response to smuggling.
“Smugglers will continue to skillfully adapt, as long as
there is a market to exploit,” Mr. Crépeau noted.
“Strengthening the capacity
of transit countries to stop irregular migration on their territory and
resorting to military means, without offering migrants and refugees long term
mobility solutions and without adequate human rights guarantees, does not
change the conditions that create the market and can only compound the human
rights violations.”
For the Special Rapporteur, the EU must acknowledge the
link between prohibition strategies which focus on securing borders and the
entrenchment of smuggling rings and of underground labour markets, resulting in
increasing risks for migrants and refugees.
“If Europe insists on focusing most of its resources on
securitisation as the means by which to tackle smuggling, it will continue to
find it difficult to defeat smuggling rings whose business model was created
when barriers and prohibitions to mobility were erected and thrives at evading
the restrictive migration policies of EU Member States,” the expert warned.
“Instead of prohibition measures which entrench the
smuggling market and push migrant further underground, the EU must develop more
harm-reduction policies, taking as a central concern the human rights of
migrants, and create innovative regulated mobility options that will
incentivise most migrants and asylum seekers to avoid having recourse to
smugglers and will reduce the size of the underground labour markets,” Mr.
Crépeau stressed.
ENDS
François Crépeau (Canada) was appointed Special
Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants in June 2011 by the UN Human Rights
Council. Mr. Crépeau is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill
University, in Montréal, where he holds the Hans and Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in
Public International Law and is scientific director of the Centre for Human
Rights and Legal Pluralism. Learn more, log on to:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Migration/SRMigrants/Pages/SRMigrantsIndex.aspx
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the
Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.
Special Procedures, the largest
body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name
of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that
address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of
the world.
Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not
UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from
any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
Read the International Convention for the Protection of
the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CMW.aspx
For more information and media requests, please contact:
Elizabeth Wabuge (+41 79 201 0122 / ewabuge@ohchr.org) or write to
migrant@ohchr.org
For media inquiries related to other UN independent
experts:
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9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)
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