Sonya Sceats
Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this afternoon’s Chatham House event on Politics, Migration and Borders in Europe. My name is Sonya Sceats and I’m an Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme here at Chatham House. I’m going to say a little bit about how this afternoon’s event is going to work. I’ll explain our theme and then I’ll introduce our sterling panel to you.
Today’s event is going to be held on the record and it is being recorded. You are really welcome to submit questions throughout the event using the Q&A function that you’ll find at the bottom of the Zoom bar. Please specify, when you’re framing questions, who you’d like an answer from, from the panel, and indicate if you would like to pose the question yourself, in which case we’ll let you do that. And let’s make this event as interactive as possible. That’s one of our big objectives, so please don’t be shy. We’ve got a really fantastic panel, but we want to fold you all into the conversation, as well, via the Q&A function and in the conversation that will then ensue after we’ve heard from our panellists.
So, what are we here to discuss today? The migration of refugees is a critical global humanitarian issue worth attention in its ow right, but it is also becoming an exemplar of backsliding by liberal democracies on their international treaty obligations and increasingly, a funnel issue for contestation over fundamental rights, generally. Europe has been building a fortress around itself for years, in the Mediterranean and on its land borders and Britain, and Ireland, just off mainland Europe, takes just 1% of the world’s refugee population and is the destination for just 3% of those who are crossing into Europe. Germany, France, Spain, all of these countries take three to four times as many refugees as us and yet, there is an enormous political furore here that has taken a life of its own on, relating to the Channel crossings, including some very tragic deaths at sea. And what this means is that Britain also has become a frontline in global clashes about how to control borders compatibly with the international obligations.
At the heart of the battle here in the United Kingdom is the principle enshrined in the Refugee Convention, that “Protection should depend on whether someone meets the internationally agreed definition of a refugee, not on the mode of their arrival.” And indeed, the Refugee Convention explicitly prohibits penalisation of refugees who do arrive irregularly. And yet, we have a bill passing through our Parliament right now, the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would penalise survivors of torture and persecution who do arrive without permission. It would block their access to an asylum determination here in this country and grant powers to the Executive to pushback vessels in the Channel and expel those who do arrive, and this is just among many other things. Only this week, the Former United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, issued a statement warning the UK against discrimination – discriminating against asylum seekers who do arrive irregularly, claiming that this would be contrary to the Refugee Convention and that it threatens the integrity of the global asylum system.
So, the bill, which is very controversial, is now on its way from the House of Commons, to the House of Lords, where scrutiny, including over its compatibility with the Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and other treaty obligations that the UK has entered into, is sure to intensify. So, this event tonight is really, really well timed and we have such a superb panel to guide us through the issues that are in play.
We will be starting with Anaïs Marin, who is an Associate Fellow in the U – in the, sorry, in the Russia and Eurasia Programme here at Chatham House. And Anaïs is a real expert on Belarus, and we’re going to be starting with her, if you like, on the Eastern frontier of the terrain that we’re – the geographical terrain that we’re mainly going to be traversing this evening. We will be passing from Anaïs, over to John Dalhuisen, who is a Senior Fellow at the European Stability Initiative and the Former Europe Director of Amnesty, where he’s well-known to a lot of us, and he is going to be talking to us about the geo-migration politics playing out at the regional level. And then, we will be passing over to Anna Vallianatou, who is an Asso – an Academy Fellow, sorry, in the Europe Programme here at Chatham House. And Anna is an expert in the EU asylum governance machinery and she’s going to be giving us a bit of an EU perspective on the issues. And then, finally, last, but definitely not least, we will be welcoming David Simmonds, who is a Conservative Member of Parliament and the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, and David is going to be able to, kind of, if you like, take us all the way over to – you know, from where others have started us off in Europe, over back here, to the United Kingdom and he’s going to, sort of, share some thoughts on the bill and what it says about Britain’s place in the world, our approach to our treaty obligations, our soft power and the like.
So, that’s a bit of a, if you like, an overview of what we’re going to be doing. I’m going to pass over now to you, Anaïs, to take us to the situation in Belarus, and we are all incredibly interested to hear from you on this. Thank you for being with us here tonight.
Anaïs Marin
Thank you very much, Sonya. Thank you for the invitation. So, I’m talking to you to a border I happen to know quite well, indeed. 12 years ago, I actually conducted fieldwork there, in the framework of a postdoc research, which was dedicated to cross-border co-operation, sister city networks and even Euro regions which were established across the Schengen Curtain, believe it or not. It was – this was the beginning of the EU’s Eastern Partnership Programme at the time, with its multilateral frame for co-operation at civil society levels, and the very border crossing point, which migrants tried to storm in November, which you saw on TV, is actually a model of successful cross-border co-operation, because it was modernised with EU funds. And further in that area is even a temporary border crossing point, right on a sluice, on the Augustów Canal, which is open only in summer for people crossing on foot, kayak or horse, and there are actually – there were, actually, plenty of British tourists who used to come there, to visit this wild borderline.
Times have changed. The border has been virtually closed since December last year, allegedly in response to the COVID pandemic, but presumably to prevent Belarusian dissidents from escaping prosecution at home by seeking refuge in friendly neighbouring countries, or even to – just to prevent them from commuting to the EU for economic reasons or to study. Mr Lukashenko has said students who are now studying in Polish universities, “You have gone there, you just stay there. You’re not welcome again anymore in Belarus.” So, this border has been very much closed for the past year, already.
I think the background reason is because Lukashenko is convinced that the revolution, which hit Belarus in 2020, was engineered from abroad, mostly from Poland, where the creators of the telegram channel, NEXTA, which played a key role in organising the protests, are located, and that this colour revolutions, of sorts, was financed by US money. He – Lukashenko is absolutely certain that the legitimacy crisis that he is experiencing at home is fabricated, that protestors are paid by the CIA to stage a colour revolution and overthrow him. And hence, all those who support the notion of sanctions against his regime are considered as enemies, whether external or internal.
And among the external enemies, first on his list are EU neighbours, which have advocated and introduced the strictest sanctions against his regime. Lithuania, where his challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, is in forced exile. Poland, where part of the shadow government in exile is located and where Belarussians who can prove they have Polish ancestors can benefit from special treatment. So, it’s called Karta Polaka. And in Latvia, where hundreds of IT experts and other young entrepreneurs have relocated over the past 18 months. So, the fact that these countries would be targeted by what appears to be a hybrid warfare attack should, therefore, come as no surprise and that is why it’s a bit frustrating how it was handled, with several deaths reported since September, because in fact, the instrumentalization by Mr Lukashenko, of the EU sensitivity to illegal migration, was entirely predictable.
There is no frame for bilateral co-operation between Belarus and the EU, other than the Visa Facilitation and Readmission Agreement, which was signed in 2020. So, this agreement would, predictably, be scrapped in case of deteriorated diplomatic sanc – diplomatic relations, as has been the case since Lukashenko’s fraudulent re-election on 9th of August 2020. Belarus unilaterally announced that it will stop implementing this agreement back in the spring, already, when it’s left the Eastern partnership altogether, on the pretext that, due to sanctions, the EU had just then adopted a new package after the forced landing of the Ryanair flight on the 23rd of May, there was no more ground for co-operation. And Lukashenko had even hinted several times that “Belarus could stop protecting the EU from armed migrants and drug traffickers,” I quote, in revenge for what he considers as “illegitimate inference in home affairs,” or if the EU failed to deliver on its promises of co-operation, which for Belarus entailed the modernisation of cross – border crossing facilities. And for years, Belarussian Border Guards had, indeed, been co-operating very closely with their neighbours to fight human trafficking, notably, and only a handful of illegal border crossing attempts were reported each year at these borders.
So, the crisis that hit the news last month is, in fact, not new and there were early warning signs since the beginning of 2021. In the first six months of the year, over 4,000 migrants were apprehended on the Lithuanian side of the border, where there is No Man’s Land, and like at the Polish border, because it was only a administrative border of – inside the USSR. Lithuania understood that this influx was engineered and the – already, in July/August, it alleged that it’s a hybrid attack meant to punish it for its strong sense on the sanctions issue. Investigative Journalists published precise details on how the shipping, accommodation and relocation of migrants to the border were handled by a company closely linked to the administration of the President of Belarus, with offices in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern Countries. And it was a – like, an open secret that, for $5,000, which is relatively little money, a package was offered straight to the EU border, with a hotel in Minsk and bussing – being bussed to the border. So, it became clear that it was a smuggling scheme.
So, what sense do we make of this? Yes, this border crisis was engineered, but I’m uncomfortable with this notion of that it was – that migrants have been weaponised. Migrants are humans and they have basic human rights, the right to life and humanitarian protection, too. Who has won from this attempt, from this hybrid attack? Apparently, I would say Poland, because they can claim, now, in Poland that the government defended its borders and it even got EU support for it. It legitimises a stance, which was always Poland’s since 2015, of serving as a shield against migrants.
The EU did not give up. It did – it paid humanitarian aid and did not let the migrants in, but what I would like to say, in conclusion, is that Lukashenko is winning, too, unfortunately. Of course, he’s got to do with new sanctions and potentially, up to 5,000 unwanted migrants he got to take care of. His blackmail did not totally work, because the stream seems halted for now. European capitals have talked directly to the source countries to cancel the flights. But he can claim that he got a phone call from Merkel, which for a domestic audience, was enough to claim that the EU finally recognised him as President.
And most importantly, and this is what I would like to stress here, he managed to destabilise the EU working on three sensitivity point. First, that the EU would be a geopolitical actor able to externalise its migration problem by signing readmission agreements with transit countries, which can be – it can be – backfire, as our colleagues will tell us more. The EU has a normative power. The way Polish Border Guards mistreated migrants, allowed Lukashenko to flip the script in the human rights narrative and declare that the EU was trampling on its own values. He could even invite Journalists to the border, on his side of the border, whereas this September, the border zone on the Polish side is a no-go zone, due to the state of exception that has been declared. And as a community of values, too, because the crisis has showed the disunity of the EU on issues relating to Rule of Law. Poland and derogated to a number of international human rights standards and it is getting away with it because of the securitisation of the issues.
So, at the end, I would say that the Polish Government had made a master stroke here in implementing directly the notion that the European Convention on Human Rights does not have pre-eminence over the Polish Constitution, which was a ruling issued by its controversial Constitutional Tribunal back in October. And at the end of the day, there has been a rally around the flag in defence of this notion, which of course, asked a number of questions about where are the European values here? I’ll stop here for now and look forward to questions, too. Sorry, I’m being a bit too long.
Sonya Sceats
No, it’s great. Thanks, Anaïs, and over to you, John.
John Dalhuisen
Thanks, Anaïs. So, we just heard from one theatre, with Anaïs fairly wryly, dryly and troublingly, describing we’re at in Poland, and I wanted to try and do very quickly, in five minutes, answer three questions, and looking at it at a kind of, Pan-European level. And so, where are we today on migration management and border control? Secondly, how did we get here? And then, thirdly, perhaps, what does this mean and what might a way out look like?
Where we are can be answered very simply. I mean, Europe’s default migration management policy today is pushbacks and fences. There are fences along pretty well every single external land border of the EU, Hungary, Croatia and Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, and pushbacks are well documented, well publicised, along every single one of them, often pretty brutal, pretty cruel ones. And not only that, many countries that are participating in this kind of activity are now pretty openly calling for this practice to be legalised. The EU legal framework should now accommodate this practice. The maritime border is an equally sorry state of affairs, pushbacks in the Aegean, the removal of rescue boats and co-operation agreements with Libya in the Central Med.
All of this is a very, very far cry from early 2015, when you had Juncker standing up saying, “Fences have no place in Europe,” the Italian Government setting up a massive rescue operation, Merkel saying, “We can do it.” Now, the central point about this is, you know, policies announced, close borders and systematically violate rights. The Refugee Convention’s pretty obviously in peril with this default policy, because it centrally depends on the ability to cross borders and apply for asylum somewhere. No border crossing, by definition, no refugee. And it is pretty problematic, ‘cause this is a system that, quite obviously, requires violence.
Now, across the EU, some are clearly rejoicing in this term. Orbán, who was the first to advocate it, he says, “Triumph, I’ve won.” Kaczyński recently, we’ve just heard the benefits he’s getting from his in Poland. Others are wincing. Merkel’s been wincing for ages, Macron’s been wincing for ages, but everyone is fundamentally accepting of this status quo border management policy.
So, how on earth did we get here? How did we go through this massive volte-face within five years? And yes, obviously, it’s partly about numbers. So, across the EU27, between 2009 and 2012, the EU, as a bloc, received per annum an average of 250,000 asylum applicants. Between 2015 and 16 it was 1,250,000. That’s a big increase and people were worried by this. But I don’t think it was just, or even primarily, about numbers. It’s about control or more accurately, the complete loss of it. So, what the migration crisis exposed, and each one subsequently has exposed, is that the EU is fundamentally incapable of controlling its borders or limiting irregular migration. Why not? And yet, it’s pretty straightforward, like, there’s a real problem. If everyone who arrives at your borders must be allowed in to allowed in to apply for asylum and you simply cannot return those who don’t get it, you have open borders, right? That is the central problem.
Between 2014-2018, 4,400,000 people applied for asylum in the EU, 880,000 a year. Half of them, a bit under half, were granted protection. Of the remaining 2.4 million who didn’t, the EU succeeded in returning less than 10% – less than 5% of failed asylum seekers from Asia and Africa were ever returned, right? So, faced with this, the reality perceives that they have – the public perceives that they have a binary choice, open borders or closed borders, and the realities, if this is the choice that they feel they have, they will choose closed borders every time. History shows this again and again and again, and there’s no moding anyone out of this. Whether that’s in the US, Haitian boat people in 92, Cuban boat people in 94, in Italy, influxes from Libya in 2003, 2008, 2017, Australia leading to its Nauru policy in 2001/2012.
The key point is all sides of the political spectrum, ‘cause all those things that I’ve discussed were introduced by Bush, on the right, Clinton on the left, Italy has been by Democrats, by demagogues, and now technocrats, they’ve all endorsed the same policy. Nauru was introduced by Liberals, was reintroduced by Labour. All the sides of the political spectrum end up sealing borders and the most troubling thing about it is, that they will do it – they will not suffer electorally, even if the policies they introduce are obviously and transparently cruel.
Sonya Sceats
John?
John Dalhuisen
Yeah.
Sonya Sceats
Could you – yeah, I know you’ve got one more point that you wanted to make in your three part, could you…
John Dalhuisen
Yeah, so, yeah…
Sonya Sceats
…come to that?
John Dalhuisen
John, get out and just end with what this means, right?
Sonya Sceats
Yeah.
John Dalhuisen
Very quickly, so what I mean – I won’t go to what a solution looks like, but essentially, it’s this. This is a fundamental challenge for the Refugee Convention, the international human rights framework. It’s a fundamental challenge for human refugee rights advocates and perhaps most importantly, it’s a fundamental challenge for Politicians who want humane rights respecting border control.
And then, maybe I’ll get there in questions, but then, you know, the essential question everyone needs to be asking themselves is, what does safe, humane, legal border control look like? And a hint, and I’ll leave this there, it does involve the much maligned co-operation with safe third countries that asylum seekers can be returned or transferred to, to get protection there, or to access status determination procedure there, allowing them, if successful, to be resettled elsewhere. Co-operation with third countries is the only way to do this and the same, indeed, is true, and maybe we’ll get there later, for boat crossing Channel migrants. Co-operation with France is the only thing that will do it humanely, safely and legally. We will get…
Sonya Sceats
Thank you, John.
John Dalhuisen
…on to look at that.
Sonya Sceats
Over to you, Anna, on the EU and then we’ll come to David, and we’ll come back to the Channel with David, no doubt.
Anna Iasmi Vallianatou
Thank you, Sonya. Hello, everyone, and thank you for attending this much needed discussion on migration policy and politics. Even though I’m a Lawyer by training, I must admit that migration is decreasingly governed by rules and increasingly by political considerations, as you’ve already heard about.
So, the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the border between Poland and Belarus is exemplifying this trend in the most brutal way. Human beings, that is refugees and migrants, have been dying and suffering in the forests between Belarus or Poland, without access to aid or asylum. But how is this possible? One would expect that international and European laws protect the right to life and to seek asylum. Indeed, Poland’s heavily militarised response to a few thousands of asylum seekers, with the deployment of approximately 20,000 Border Guards who used violence to deter and push them back to Belarus, goes against EU asylum rules and the International Refugee Law. And this has been reported by multiple organisations, including the UN High Commission of Refugees and the Council of Europe.
Poland, however, has managed to get away with these violations and even receive the explicit support and solidarity of the European Commission and the Council. Despite the recent EU concerns about backsliding of the Rule of Law and the judiciaries independence in Poland, there was no criticism by the European Commission when Poland’s parliament passed a new law legalising, as you heard before, collective expulsions of migrants at the border, an illegal practice, which is widely known as pushbacks.
To the contrary, the European Commission has also asked to propose emergency legislation allowing Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which are the three countries bordering Belarus, EU countries, to derogate from EU asylum rules, setting a dangerous precedent for the violation of refugee rights. All of these emergency measures and derogations from human rights and refugee protection principles are done in the name of security. The situation at the border with Belarus has been framed across European governments and institutions as a ‘hybrid threat’ in which refugees are used by the Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko as ‘hybrid weapons’.
And while it’s true that Lukashenko has manufactured this border crisis and is using asylum seekers as pawns to put pressure on the EU, Poland and the European Union’s response to it have only exacerbated the situation, resulting in human deaths, suffering and a deepening crisis of EU migration policy and fundamental values. Contrary to the European Commission’s rhetoric of “An unprecedented situation requiring unprecedented measures,” the situation with Belarus was neither unforeseeable, nor impossible to address with the existing legal framework.” Lukashenka’s practices are heinous, but they’re not novel. Turkey threatened to open its borders with Greece in 2020, resulting in a military standoff, and Morocco released more than 2,000 migrants into Spain last spring, provoking similar EU reactions against the so-called instrumentalization of migration.
The European Union, though, is not simply the victim of this instrumentalization strategy. The Union’s migration policies, which have already described, you know, earlier, they have been more restrictive in order to prevent refugees from arriving, and these policies have indeed contributed to such instrumentalization. So, it was the EU who used refugees as bargaining chips when it pays Turkey to keep migrants out, or supported the Libyan Coastguards to intercept asylum seekers at sea and return them to detention centres in Libya. This, and many other arrangements of questionable legality, have enabled Turkey’s at having – sorry, have enabled countries at the EU’s periphery, such as Turkey or Morocco, or Belarus recently, to also use refugees in transactional terms and leverage Europe’s fear of migration for political gain. This is what I describe as a vicious circle of refugees’ instrumentalization from all sides, which the European Union has conveniently framed as a hybrid threat to avoid taking responsibility and continued deterrence policies.
Last, European countries can only break the circle by treating refugees humanely and by respective the international obligations, which in practice, means that people fleeing violence and persecution must be able to exercise the right to seek asylum in Europe. This is essential, not only to avoid being caught up in geopolitical blackmailing, but also, for the EU’s own political survival as a union founded on the Rule of Law and the protection of human rights. Thank you.
Sonya Sceats
Thank you, Anna. Over to you, David.
David Simmonds MP
Thank you very much, indeed. Sonya, what – as you said in your introduction, we’ve been debating, this week, the Nationality and Borders Bill in the Parliament here in the UK. I thought it might be helpful just to start with a little bit of the context running up to that. Most will know that the UK didn’t really have any form of immigration controls at all up until the post-war Attlee Government, which as the retreat from Empire, which had a free movement system very similar to the one at the European Union, began to gather pace. There was concern about the impact that, potentially, millions of people from countries that had been in the British Empire, who had a right to come and settle in the UK, would have on domestic politics.
And that reflects a political conundrum that I think we see to this day, which is that when we go out knocking on doors, talking to people at public meetings, there’s always someone in the room, there are always people who have concerns about the levels of migration into a country, and at the same time, people tend to like all the immigrants that they’ve personally come across and interact with. And in my time as a Member of Parliament, before that my many years as a Councillor, whilst I heard many times on the doorsteps, people say, “We’re worried about the level of immigration, we think it’s too high,” I’ve never had a single communication from anyone saying, “I think this person who I’ve met, who I’ve come across, might be an illegal immigrant, will you do something about it?” But I’ve had dozens of communications from people saying, “My neighbour,” “this person I met,” “this person who comes to our church,” “this person who’s, you know, a parent of a child who goes to class with my child, is at risk of deportation. Please will you intervene and try and make sure that they’re able to stay in the UK?” So, how people feel about it always has a degree of ambiguity.
Now, following that post-war Labour Government introducing the first immigration controls into the UK, probably the next significant change, which is the one that we live with to this day, came in the early 90s, with both the 1999 Immigration Act and various pieces of operational guidance that followed that. The reason behind the implementation of that probably was in the minds of the Labour Politicians who were then leading a relatively new government, that they were very supportive the expansion of the European Union, the accession of the Visegrád states, and they knew that that was likely to bring significant numbers of people to the UK. And at that stage, the government, led by Andy Burnham, now the Mayor of Greater Manchester, but then the Immigration Minister, introduced a number of things into the UK.
The first was dispersal, so the principle that asylum seekers did not have free choice where they went. They would be sent to a place by the Home Office, whilst their assigned claim would be considered. The second was no recourse to public funds, so the principle that you’re not eligible to claim benefits and use public services in the UK, until you have been granted asylum here. The right to work was removed and people who were asylum seekers, in general, were removed from the mainstream of being able to claim benefits and access social support in the UK, under a kind of, two-tier system, where whilst you were seeking asylum, you were not eligible to access most of the benefits.
And of course, at that time, we saw, across the European Union, the development of Schengen, and of course, as we saw in the recent Brexit debate, it’s clear that the complexities of how that system operated, and in particular, the fact that the EU did not ever have any form of competence, in terms of border control, but it had both oversight of the principles of free movement, but Schengen, as we saw in response to the pandemic, for example, made every member state perfectly free to close their borders if they faced an emergency and, indeed, to deny entry to anyone they wished if they had genuine grounds to do that. Whereas I think the assumption was that free movement meant that, genuinely, anybody could go anywhere.
And the EU, over recent years, has begun to develop a more robust approach to the management of those external borders. So, you’ve heard about the principle of Fortress Europe, but also, the engagement with Turkey, they payment to ask Turkey to host very large numbers of refugees, and the development of Frontex as the external border agency to act on behalf of all the EU member states, with a view to maintaining security of those borders and ensure that just as free movement can be respected within it, that the external approach would be very much based upon people establishing a right to claim that asylum.
And the consequences for the UK, we know, firstly, Brexit has meant that as we’ve left the Dublin Treaty, we no longer have the ability to return people to other European countries in the way that we did previously, but to date, the numbers arriving, whether in small boats across the Channel, or by air or by any other route at all, we see around two thirds to three quarters of those people establishing that they have a genuine legal claim to asylum in the United Kingdom. So, the vast majority of people who come to our country as asylum seekers are granted asylum here and qualify for it under our laws, even though proportionately of the number is much lower than it is in France and very much lower than it is in Germany.
For the Nationality and Borders Bill, which we’ve just put through the House of Commons, and which is now going to be considered by the House of Lords, I think the point which I sought to make in – into consideration of that, which I think is also very relevant in the context of some of the previous legislation, is that a lot of the issues are operational, rather than legislative. So, if we consider elements in that bill that have sub – been subject of a lot of debate, pushbacks, for example, well, pushbacks at sea are already frequently used, for example, dealing with vessels that may be smuggling, unlawful fishing, and things like that. So, it is a long-established principle within Maritime Law, that pushbacks may be used, but clearly, it would not be safe for a Border Force cata to physically intervene against one of the unseaworthy vessels that we’ve seen coming across the Channel. But the impression, sometimes, is that the bill seeks to legalise the use of pushbacks, but what it simply affirms is that pushbacks, which are already used in other contexts, may sometimes be relevant in this context, as they are already used by Frontex, for example, in the Mediterranean.
There’s a big challenge there around what the UK means when we talk about “safe and legal routes,” and clearly, firstly, if the UK is to defend the idea that someone can be turned away because they had access to a safe and legal route, but instead, chose to pay a people smuggler or a trafficker, then we need to be able to be sure that those legal routes are genuinely available. And I’ve made the point, and I think this is the way forward, that having a digital way in which you can access your application for asylum in the UK and, indeed, many countries, probably, around the world looking at this, will be very, very important, because it would enable people not to have to put their lives at risk, but be able to make their application from a safe place. And of course, offshoring, which was considered in there.
Now, clearly, there’s a lot of concern that the UK should not go down the route that Australia did, whether you look at it in the most blunt terms, because it costs an incredibly large amount of money, but more significantly, the human rights consequences of it are very, very concerning indeed. However, we already have seen some discussions where, for example, France has said, “Well, what about a processing centre based in Calais, so people who choose not to establish their claim in France,” at the centre that’s at the Town Hall in Calais, which I’ve been to, “could, instead, make an application to the UK authorities, perhaps at the same place?” again, without putting their lives at risk in the Channel. So, offshoring in that sense, allowing that asylum application to be processed in another country, need not always be controversial, and the ability, for example, to make your application at a British Consulate in another country, again, would be a form of offshoring. At the moment, you cannot make a claim unless you’re physically here in the United Kingdom, so having a system where people can make it in another country, seems to me to be a logical way to begin to establish safe and legal routes.
And finally, on that point, the issue around age assessments, again, that’s something I have huge interest in, ‘cause of my background as a Lead Member for Children’s Services in a local authority with very large numbers of refugee children. But the provisions in the bill simply say, “Should it be the case that we see well established, scientifically effective, means which are not harmful, that could be used, then those may be considered in evidence.” It doesn’t say that the present forms to – of evidence, which we know are inaccurate, probably have no better than a three to five year window of accuracy, which is, evidentially speaking, useless in a British court, would be considered, somehow, to be evidentially effective in future. It simply says that should that emerge in future, then that could be considered.
So, three very brief points to finish on. Firstly, following the debate that we had in the House of Commons this week, Dominic Raab, the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary for the UK, came to give evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I asked him, and a number of other members did, to reaffirm the UK’s absolute commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights. And he was very happy to do that, to absolutely confirm our commitment to it. And we then explored some of the other wider international commitments, so – such as the UN Convention on Torture and Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls, Convention on the Rights of the Child, various other pieces of legislation, all of which can be quite relevant to the debate about borders, and again, there’s a strong sense from the UK Government of commitment around that.
What there is, however, I think, is a need to think about how a desire on the part of the UK to pivot more towards resettlement based programmes, rather than asylum based programmes, so moving along the lines of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme, rather than simply saying, “People who can come here will have the following rights,” but saying, “What could we proactively do to provide asylum, to provide refuge for people in other countries, especially those who might be affected by conflicts in which the UK has been directly involved?” And having that, as we know, although it is more expensive, it is regarded by the UNHCR as the global gold standard for refugee approaches. And in that context, it seems to me we are moving towards a need for a new Global Compact around refugees. We know there are something like 100 million people on the wor – on the move in the world at the moment. Very significant numbers of those people are in The Americas. Okay, so we know the border the United States and Mexico, but then the borders as we go through, down through South America, where there has been history both of conflict, climate change, economic issues, where we’re seeing very large numbers of people. Does the UK have a role in The Americas as a place providing asylum and refuge? Are we seeing our role very much as limited to the parts of the global neighbourhood where it is relatively more straightforward to physically make your way to our country, or should we be more active in other parts of the world?
So, that sense of needing to move toward a Global Compact on Migration, which perhaps updates, taking into account the rules that are in things like the European Convention on Human Rights, seems to me to be a good discussion that we should be having at the United Nations at the moment, and seeing if we can find a way where everybody can ensure that we both support each other, you know, the basis of a principle of a Global Britain, but also that we start to manage out some of the concerns, the frustrations that people feel, that in domestic politics and international politics, can undermine the will of countries to continue to provide asylum.
Sonya Sceats
Thank you, David, and thank you to all of our panellists, who I think have done the most superb job in setting out for us the incredible, kind of, terrain of issues that these migration, kind of, politics throw up for our governments and indeed, you know, the people in our countries and, of course, for those who are taking these incredible journeys, in order to seek safety in the kinds of countries that we live in. So, thank you very much.
I’m going to open up now for questions from our 50 or 60 strong participant group. We’ve got a couple of questions that have come through from the Q&A function at the bottom, and I encourage more people to use that, please, so we’ve got as many questions as possible to field. The first one comes from Emily Harding and she’s asked if I could read this out. “How can governments overcome domestic political constraints in this debate to draw up strong politically acceptable policies and arguments in favour of the protection of migrant and refugee rights?” So, David, I’m wondering whether you’d, kind of, like to, kind of, say anymore on that, since you’ve, sort of, you know, had some thoughts on that?
David Simmonds MP
So, one of the great strengths of the Syrian Resettlement Scheme was that it was based upon communities volunteering to take people in, and that’s why I think we’ve seen, with that programme, that the feedback has been extremely good. We’ve not seen the kinds of community tensions and worries being expressed, for example, by civic leaders, about how that is impacting on those communities and it’s worked for every part of the UK. So, people have been resettled to rural areas, to cities, to areas of great wealth and to areas of great poverty and it’s brought in civil society as well, so religious organisations, charities, communities, to help with that effort. And so, I think that idea that that is a positive way forward is one that has a great deal of traction.
The challenge I think we then see is around the way in which dispersal, in particular, operates, and we know in the United Kingdom that every part of the country is playing a part in the resettlement of refugees. Many of the London boroughs, for example, have enormous numbers of child refugees and a lot of initial accommodations of people who arrive into our country who are claiming asylum, who stay in a place for a few weeks, at the moment with quarantine and things like that, but will stay in a place for a few weeks, before they’re then moved on to accommodation of a more permanent nature, whilst their asylum claim is considered. And most of that move on accommodation is in the poorest parts of the country, because the Home Office contracts pay absolute rock bottom prices, so people are being placed in communities that are already very poor, where there’s already significant pressure. So, although there is housing available in those areas, now it’s clear that it doesn’t always create the most welcoming environment.
So, I think there’s a lesson, you know, that we’ve learnt in the UK, and my sense, from talking to Politicians, particularly across the European Union, is that those tensions are pretty similar wherever you go and that where we see a system where communities know that they have come forward, they’ve made an offer to provide accommodation and support, then that creates a much smoother path for the settlement of those refugees and those asylum seekers, than where there is a feeling that it is somehow being imposed upon them from outside. So, for me, always grassroots, always local, if you want to make that resettlement process politically and practically more effective.
Sonya Sceats
Thank you, David. The next question we have is from Gregory. Gregory, would you like to come and verbally ask your question?
Katya Andrusz
[Pause] Sure, can you hear me?
Sonya Sceats
We can.
Katya Andrusz
My name’s Katya Andrusz. I’m visiting my dad and he invited me to take part in your interesting discussion, and my question is completely different to any that he would ever ask. So, I make that caveat right at the beginning. I wanted – I work for an international human rights organisation, and I’d be very interested to hear whether the panellists believe that the current migration situation in Europe could lead to a dismantling of the human rights architecture, which has been so painstakingly built up over so many decades, and if so, whether this could lead to acceptance, or even legal codification of further rights violations in the future?
Sonya Sceats
Thank you very much. I’m going to – this is such an important question. I’m going to suggest that, John, we hear from you on this and then, Anna, it would be lovely to hear from you on this, as well.
John Dalhuisen
I mean, I think the simple answer is probably yes, and then it’s a question of how quarantine, the changes that would happen to an international human rights framework and an international refugee framework, would be from the rest of the international human rights system. But I think it’s pretty obvious that international norms adjust over time and adapt to international consensus. When everyone is violating a norm and everyone is agreeing that, in the end, this is really okay, in the end, the norm must adapt to the practice. And indeed, this is the very same process by which these norms came into being in the first place, right? Norms follow doing, in the end, and if one is doing something unlawful, in the end, they will just say, “This is no longer unlawful, this is ridiculous.”
And I think you’ve seen this happen over time. I mean, you’ve seen it in judgements. Even the European Court of Human Rights is delivering much more timid judgements than it was four/five years ago on a range of these issues. The seriousness with which a number of countries are saying that pushbacks proximate to borders of people immediately detained, you know, they should be okay, and lots of people agree with them and think this is perfectly sensible and then, in any case, it’s certainly what they’re doing. Well, this would definitely be a right to rollback, make no mistake about it.
So, I think it is a real issue and I think there are very profound issues about whether the Refugee Convention, as currently conceived, at least, is sustainable in an environment where no-one’s letting anyone cross borders, anymore, okay? Then you just don’t have a Refugee Convention anymore, and this is a – the reality of praxis, and then the question is, well, how long does it take for the norm to adapt in turn?
Now, it seems to me, but I see another question has been asked, so other panellists might get to this in a minute, there are policies that are human rights compatible, that are Refugee Convention compatible, that do allow for the poorest borders and do control irregular migration, they exist, but it’s a leap and they will jump up against some people’s moral intuitions, even if they are rights compliant formally. But let’s park that for now. But the short answer is, yes, people should be worried and people need to think about different solutions and just say we need to uphold the current thing and we should leave everything as it is, it’s not a solution. That way perdition lies.
Sonya Sceats
Anna? Thanks, John. Anna?
Anna Iasmi Vallianatou
Yeah, thank you very much, Sonya. That’s a great question, actually, because it’s – you know, John talked about the International Refugee Convention and, you know, the dismantling of norms as we know them, but I think that goes beyond Refugee Law. It’s about human rights, for example, within Europe. I’ll give you an example of the criminalisation of humanitarian aid, which does not – doesn’t have to do with asylum seekers themselves, but rather for – with humanitarian workers and activists and all of those of civil society who are participating, for example, in certain rescue, or they’re assisting refugees. And this is a problem not just for Refugee Law. It’s also a problem for, you know, the norms that we live by and the fundamental values that are at the core of our Western societies.
So – and on John’s point about norms and reality of praxis or, like, how norms change over time. Yes, certain norms, or more norms, do change, but there’s some fundamental or unchangeable norms, such as, for example, the right to life. I mean, there are some – there’s some core values, as recognised at least in Europe, which are not negotiable and they shouldn’t be. So, for example, the right to life – the need to protect the right to life of an asylum in Africa – an asylum seeker crossing between Libya and Italy must not be negotiable because of the closed border policy and that’s, indeed, moral – you know, a moral imperative, but it’s also one of the most fundamental principles and values of the system and the civilisation we live in. Whether we want to change this or not, that’s another question, but personally, I would stand by it. Thank you.
Sonya Sceats
Thanks, Anna. So, I think that some of the other questions have been, kind of, touched on. I want to go to David. David, did you want to come on screen and ask your question directly? There you are.
David
Sure, I’m happy to do that. Can you hear me okay?
Sonya Sceats
We can.
David
Great, thanks. I mean, a full disclosure, I’ve had a – often discussed these issues and had a good back and forth with John on this, as we used to be colleagues in Amnesty. But I wanted to ask, I mean, from a, sort of, pragmatic point of view, what’s the right way to create a balance here between the needs to balance real or perceived anxieties and concerns within domestic populations, of the kind that David Simmonds was talking about in his contribution, with the question of choice or agency for refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom will feel a particular affinity to a country, they may have family there, they may have language – you know, the ability to speak the language, which is obviously an important consideration, or family connections, or other reasons to be drawn to a particular country? And then, of course, the third big issue of how rich countries with capacity are able to share the responsibility with many of the countries, which host vast refugee populations, which are much poorer. What’s the right way of balancing all of these three elements and, you know, and to find a, sort of, pragmatic way forward in view of all of them?
Sonya Sceats
I would like to see whether Anaïs, you’ve got any views that you’d like to share on that question?
Anaïs Marin
Well, not really. I’m not a migration expert, you know, and – but if I may, I think the – we – the crisis we started about – talking about today, you know, is – it was, in a way, minor in numbers, but it puts the – all the Europeans – be in front of a very huge challenge. And when I hear about adapting rules to reality, I’m a bit worried, so I would actually adhere to Anna’s statement that, well, first of all, you know, there are human rights, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a European law it’s being tramped on. There is basic human rights and, indeed, the [inaudible – 50:53] is absolutely forbidden in international law, period.
So, the – what I would like to say is that the – in the Eastern part of the continent, for example, in Russia, there are – they don’t know exactly how many illegal migrants they have in the Russian Federation, whether it’s one million or two millions. What we have seen with the instrumentalization of the crisis by Mr Lukashenko can be just an appetiser of what may come to our Eastern borders in the future, when there will be, for example, climate migrants, coming not by, you know, 5,000, but 50,000, 500,000, and then I wonder what would be the answer from Europe? And I think we should have a much wider view on how we could talk to the source countries and connect the policies of restricting the outflow from there with other huge challenges, such as climate change, you know, investing more in making – in reforestation, for example, and things that can help people find a reason to stay in their countries. Because migration has been there always and it will always be there and unfortunately, it will always – there will be more on the rise, the numbers will rise. Rogue countries will use this as an instrument to destabilise Europe, for sure, in the future. So, when the numbers will rise exponentially, the – this policy of keeping the borders closed will not be enough, definitely not, and it will be huge human rights violations again.
Sonya Sceats
Thanks, Anaïs, and I’m going to have one final question. Adina, would you like to ask your question and come onscreen?
Adina
[Pause] Yes, can you hear me?
Sonya Sceats
We can.
Adina
Thank you. I do research on migration for the EU Asylum Office and so, my question is, kind of, coming from the research I have done, and it is to what extent do you think that the EU Dublin regulations are challenging EU co-operation and solidarity on migration and creating the kind of tensions that you have all spoken about between the international laws on human rights and refugees, and border management practices? And do you think it’s possible for us to move away from the system or – yeah, I guess, in the future?
Sonya Sceats
Anna, would you like to address that?
Anna Iasmi Vallianatou
Thank you, Sonya. Thank you, Adina. Yeah, I can briefly comment and perhaps others want to jump in, as well. Well, Dublin, right, a system which has not been functioning properly and I’d say also, has created great disparities between the South, the North of Europe and, also, let’s say that it has not – it undermines, let’s say, some of the basic principles of International Refugee Law, such as that “refugees can seek asylum in any country, not in the country of first arrival.” This is not enshrined in the International Refugee Convention, it is not. It is part of the Dublin Regulation. So, indeed, it undermines fair responsibility sharing and it’s – it hasn’t worked.
Would it be – would this be able to change? I think then, we go back to the question that I think, also, Samantha posed, of domestic politics and a way to compromise between domestic political considerations and those at EU level. And we know that the, let’s say, the revision of Dublin Regulation in 2016 did not go forward. Another framework proposed by the Commission is currently stuck at council level, because there’s no agreement between EU countries. So, indeed, the matter, from a political perspective, is not going any forward. So, there’s no, let’s say, a future whereby European states would agree on a fair asylum responsibility system.
I’m not sure whether, you know, events coming from different migration phenomena, such as the one witnessed in Poland recently, or further, like, let’s say, migration influx from the South, would change this in the future, as John put it. I think that political responses will adjust to that and somehow, Europe will have to take action, even though it’s at a standstill now. But definitely, I have to agree that, you know, this is the – isn’t any functional.
Sonya Sceats
Thank you, Anna. So, I’m going to, kind of, try and summarise where I think we’ve gotten to, in the last minutes remaining to us. I think you can see, from what you’ve heard form our panel tonight and indeed, from the questions that have come from you, our audience. This is a deeply contested issue domain that is engaging unbelievably fundamental and indeed, very troubling questions for us around shared human values, the right to life, protection from persecution and torture, human dignity, values of compassion. These are all desperately engaged, and I think we’ve all agreed tonight that what we are seeing across many of these theatres, and we’ve only just been focusing here in Europe, but of course, these are globalised problems in so many ways, what we are seeing is the instrumentalization of people who are making these dangerous journeys, for political ends, be they domestic political ends or be they regional or wider global political ends.
And I think what we’ve heard, although there have been, sort of, differing views from our panel, which is always interesting and provocative, and helpful as we’re beginning to think about these things, differences of views about – well, I mean, I think a consensus that this is also, in many ways, becoming a fault line and in some ways, a crisis of the International Rule of Law. And again, different views from panellists about whether that’s a disaster or not. But if we do believe in law, any form of law, as a constraint on political impulses, then this is an issue and it’s a crisis not just for the people whose lives we’re talking about tonight, but also for liberalism and for international liberalism.
And I, kind of, end there, because of course, they are the values on which Chatham House was founded during that period following the First World War. I mean, all of these issues are very, very much in play and the stakes are incredibly high. It has been so wonderful to have you all here this afternoon. I’m so grateful to our panellists, who’ve brought a really rich array of perspectives, and David, thank you for taking time out of a really, you know, busy parliamentary timetable, to come and to share a, sort of, frontline political perspective from here in Westminster, as well. So, thank you all very, very much and we look forward to welcoming you to another Chatham House members’ event very shortly, on this issue, or indeed, many others. Thank you for your time.
