There’s a powerful tool you can use on the BBC website, “Syrian Journey: Choose Your Own Escape Route”, to get a sense of the dismal, dangerous choices faced by Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe. Based on real stories gathered by the BBC’s Arabic division, it illustrates the daily dilemmas you face as one of nine million refugees forced to flee Syria. With your assets reduced to pretty much zero, and middlemen and traffickers poised to fleece you of what remains of your paltry savings, you must weigh up potential routes — overland or by boat, a safer route or a more dangerous one — on which you are less likely to be discovered by the border authorities. And if you are among the fortunate few who finally make it to Europe, you confront the nail-biting wait to see if you will join the small pool of successful asylum applicants.
The journey to Europe has long proved treacherous and tragic for refugees. But in the past year the situation has reached crisis point amid a huge exodus of people from Syria and Africa, with unstable Libya offering little respite or refuge for the thousands fleeing.
The deaths of over 800 men, women and children in Mediterranean waters on April 19 focused international attention on the crisis, although that tragedy was perhaps only the most horrendous mass loss of life in recent years. While many boats have been lost outside European waters, making it difficult to arrive at precise figures, the Migrant Files, a project run by a group of European journalists, estimates that since 2000 as many as 29,000 migrants have died attempting to reach Europe.
Europe’s reaction — at an individual as well as an institutional level — has been both admirable and very disappointing. On the positive side, there have been some impressive initiatives, among them Mare Nostrum, run by the Italian government between 2013 and 2014, which rescued some 1,40,000 people from European and international waters.
There have also been heartwarming stories of heroism: a Greek army sergeant who with little regard for his own safety rushed into the water to save the lives of several people after their boat capsized (the photo of him carrying a 24-year-old Eritrean woman has become an enduring image); a Viennese hotel almost exclusively employing refugees which was able to raise thousands of euros through crowd funding. Then there’s Sea-Watch, a philanthropic project launched in Germany that will embark on rescue missions in the Mediterranean, providing water, food and medical aid to people on boats that are in trouble.
Sadly, however, such stories are far from the rule. Many Europeans seem to have ditched compassion in favour of joining in the continent-wide chorus of anti-immigrant sentiment, a refrain that has gathered volume following the economic downturn and high levels of unemployment in parts of the region.
“They MUST be sent back or better still prevented from coming” read a comment at the bottom of the Daily Mail article reporting the deaths of the 800-plus migrants. “There has to be a tough stance to stop this, not a softening of approach. If they never set sail they wouldn’t die.”
Short on sympathyA cursory glance at comments on other online media suggests this is not an uncommon point of view. Last month a British headline-courting columnist, Katie Hopkins, wrote in the widely read Sun newspaper about how little sympathy she felt for the boat refugees, whom she described as “cockroaches”. As a UN official pointed out, this type of dehumanising language was what was favoured by the Nazis and other perpetrators of genocide.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has also chipped in with the suggestion that the EU follow Australia’s zero tolerance policy; Australia has set itself the goal of ensuring that not a single asylum seeker enters the country. To this end, Abbott’s government deploys detention centres in the Pacific and even resorts to towing away refugee-carrying boats. Despite political pressure from the right, European governments have so far resisted following suit. But it is also clear that the policy towards migrants is hardening just as the humanitarian crisis is becoming more acute. Operation Mare Nostrum has been replaced by Triton, a programme run by Frontex, the EU’s border agency, in a limited zone just off the Italian coast, with a fraction of Nostrum’s budget. Its focus is on border management rather than on humanitarian concerns.
A military programme, approved in the past few days by EU countries, to target traffickers, which will involve increased surveillance and intelligence gathering, capturing boats and the facilities they embark from, has been condemned by human rights organisations for putting the lives of refugees at risk by prioritising border control over human lives.
Blanket refusalA proposal by the European Commission to bring in mandatory quotas for European countries to take in a minimum number of refugees arriving from North Africa also looks unlikely to be adopted, amid stiff opposition from some member states, including Britain, Spain and France. The initiative would have tackled a major flaw in Europe’s existing system for refugees. Under the “Dublin doctrine”, asylum seekers must apply and have their application processed in the country they arrive in: typically one on the borders of Europe, such as Italy, Greece and Spain. This has had a number of consequences. First, these border countries have been overwhelmed by applications, leading them to reject the vast majority. It has also meant that refugees wishing to go to other countries, where they might have family or contacts able to help, use other dangerous means to get there; the death of a Sikh refugee in an airless container in the Thames estuary in England in August last year provided another reminder that the dangers do not end when migrants enter Europe.
It has also meant that the number of people granted asylum varies greatly across Europe: Germany attracts the largest number of refugees, with over 2,00,000 receiving asylum last year (to Britain’s 32,000 and France’s 64,000).
While a quota system would by no means solve the challenges facing Europe, it would help the people of the continent share the not unsubstantial costs involved in settling large numbers of desperate new arrivals. It would also adhere to the spirit of what the EU is meant to be about. The final shape of Europe’s response to this crisis will emerge over the next few months. Whether it uses the human cargo arriving on its southern shores as an opportunity to show the world a united humanitarian solution, or as an affirmation of its domination by segregated self-interest, remains to be seen.