November, 2014
Last month, Berliners commemorated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a border crossing that not only separated a nation and families for decades but one that also took an official toll of at least 136 human lives. Still nowadays, many deadly border crossings continue to exist around the world, mostly as a product of governments whose migration policies prioritize preventing illegal immigration over protecting human rights.
North Korea’s abhorrent regime, with its minefield border with South Korea, is one of the first that comes to mind; with a border crossing that is deadly enough to deter even the bravest and the most foolish from an escape attempt south. The border between the United States and Mexico scores a comfortable second in the ranking of the deadliest border crossings in the world. But what if I told you that during the first nine months of 2014, 13 times as many people died by drowning trying to reach Europe through the Mediterranean Sea than crossing the US-Mexico border? What is more, what if I told you that this year, three quarters of all migration fatalities across the world happened during attempts to reach Europe and that thousands of lives could be saved at a negligible cost but they are currently dispensed?
The well known Lampedusa tragedy, where over 360 migrants officially died in October 2013, was just one of many shipwrecks that occur every year. According to the International Organization for Migration more than 3,000 migrants from North Africa drowned while trying to reach Europe in the first three quarters of 2014, a new historical record; the previous peak was reached in 2011 with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war but the annual death toll had never reached 3000 in a year.
These numerous fatalities occurred despite the significant efforts of Operation Mare Nostrum, established after the Lampedusa tragedy in October last year, which managed to rescue over 150,000 migrants across the Mediterranean since the beginning of its operations. How many thousands of people will drown now that Operation Mare Nostrum has officially ended and been replaced by Operation Triton, which has one third of the budget (3 million euro a month), and whose primary focus is on border management instead of on search and rescue and whose range of operations is confined within 30 nautical miles from the Italian coast?
Although the Italian navy’s commander-in-chief declared that they will continue to operate as if no decision had been taken and that they do not plan to pass on the search and rescue activities to Operation Triton, the future of Operation Mare Nostrum is uncertain; other sources point that the Italian navy will continue to scale-back its operations during the next two months.
Although one cannot rule-out the possibility of a pull-factor as an unintended consequence of the undertaken search and rescue operations, this possible secondary effect that may encourage more migrants and smugglers to take this risky trip, cannot be used as a reason to oppose saving human lives at a relatively low cost as the UK government officials have done. What is more, as rightly pointed out by the International Migration Organization and Amnesty International, it is the humanitarian crises near Europe’s border that are driving this large migration wave, these are not economic migrants but refugees fleeing from life threatening conditions in their countries of origin.
The Italian authorities (including Prime Minister Matteo Renzi) had been complaining (and rightly so) about the unfairly heavy burden they have to carry in the moral responsibility of rescuing migrants from drifting and sinking boats in the Mediterranean.
In an ideal world, the responsibility of safeguarding human rights would be shared on a global scale according to each country’s capacity to help. This is obviously not politically feasible, but a fair system of burden-sharing between EU Member States is a perfectly reasonable goal given the legal framework defined by the Lisbon Treaty. This legal framework is also adequate for creating a well-functioning Common European Asylum System, which currently serves as a coordinator but not as a unified policy unit that could work together with EuropeAid to tackle the refugee’s migration flow at its roots, in the most effective and cost efficient manner.
Instead of downsizing the relatively (but not sufficiently) successful Operation Mare Nostrum into an operation that prioritizes border management over human lives, the EU should jointly fund enhanced search and rescue operations throughout the Mediterranean and jointly manage refugees across Member States in a way that can be agreed upon as fair burden-sharing.
Carlos de Sousa
