International Human Rights Day
Europe must remain a safe haven for protection-seekers
While European borders are closed off more and more effectively, stranded migrants who seek protection are left in atrocious situations at the other side of the borders. Europe must provide them with a safe haven.
(Brussels, Belgium) – On the occasion of the International Human Rights Day, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Europe calls on EU policymakers to immediately end the policy of turning a blind eye to the atrocious treatment of migrants in need of protection on the other side of the European borders. JRS-Europe will present first-hand information from migrants stranded in Algeria, Morocco and Libya at a media breakfast and public event on Wednesday, 8th December, 10:00, in the Salon Room at the Résidence Palace in Brussels. Two new booklets on this topic will be launched.
The event will feature Mr Hassan Muhumet Saleban, a Somali refugee currently living in Malta, who will offer testimony about his confinement in a detention centre in Libya during his flight to Europe. Following this, JRS-Europe researcher Ms Rozemarijn Vanwijnsberghe will present information from interviews she did with stranded migrants in Algeria and Morocco. Ms Barbara Lochbihler, MEP, and coordinator of the Green/EFA group in the European Parliament subcommittee on human rights, will offer her views on how EU policy can be used to better safeguard migrants lives.
Such testimonies represent the wider struggle protection-seekers now face in their attempt to seek safe haven in Europe. “We currently witness the most successful closure of EU borders to any kind of person in need of protection,” says Mr Stefan Kessler of JRS-Europe. “At the same time, access to the EU territory is still the only way a person can ask for asylum protection in Europe. But travelling to the EU is increasingly difficult for most protection-seekers. Instead they are stranded in countries like Algeria, Libya and Morocco – countries with atrocious human rights records.”
Two booklets will be launched at the event that will give further details on the lives of stranded migrants on the other side of Europe’s borders. The first, Do They Know, chronicles the harrowing experiences of migrants stuck in Libya, detained in inhumane conditions and left without any formal access to protection. The second, I Don’t Know Where to Go, reveals the situation of migrants in Algeria and Morocco, who live in a state of perpetual fear of mistreatment from local authorities and xenophobic sentiment from the broader public.
Mr Kessler adds, “In these countries no national asylum procedure are in place. Even those who are given refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are often treated as irregular migrants and face the danger of deportation into the hands of their persecutors.” According to Mr Kessler, “this situation is a consequence of the almost hermetic closure of the European southern borders to protection-seekers.”
JRS-Europe calls on all European policymakers to heed the Union’s values for the respect of human dignity and human rights by ensuring access to protection for all migrants who are in need of it, and to not leave migrants stranded in countries where their lives are endangered.
