The Refugee Flow: A never-ending story
The Refugee Flow: A never-ending story
In the last decade, the refugee phenomenon has hit the headlines in international media. The flow of people from the south towards the prosperous countries of the north has had a huge impact in the domestic politics of several Western countries. As Eyskens highlights (2022), human history is replete with cases when masses had to leave their territories of birth towards foreign countries where they had to adapt to the new culture and the environment. For instance, during the two world wars, nearly two million Belgians fled to the Netherlands and France (Eyskens 2022). More recently, millions of Syrians had to leave their country following the atrocities of the conflicting sides in the civil war. The war in Ukraine which started in February 2022 has demonstrated the fact that the refugee phenomenon will not limit itself to the flow of people from the Middle East or Africa but can also emerge in other forms and from other territories.
Following, please find a current tour d'horizon on mankind's never ending immigration story, compiled from various resources.
The Russian Exodus
For more than two decades, Central Asian labor migrants have traveled to Russia for work. Now, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a compulsory military draft, hundreds of thousands of Russians are heading in the opposite direction.
Following Putin’s announcement of Russia’s first military mobilization since World War II on Sept. 21, hundreds of thousands of Russian men have left the country to avoid being drafted to fight in Ukraine. The former Soviet republics of Central Asia quickly emerged as a primary destination for Russian draft dodgers looking for the nearest safe, affordable, and legal exit out of Russia. With airfares skyrocketing, Russian men have been rushing to Russia’s southern border, since they can enter Kazakhstan visa-free with only their internal passports—a mandatory ID issued to all citizens—in hand, sometimes moving farther south to Kyrgyzstan, which has the same policy. That’s a lifeline for the estimated 70 percent of Russian citizens who are not in possession of a passport for international travel.
Russian exiles are having to rely on the hospitality of a Central Asian population that has greatly suffered from stigmatization, racism, and discrimination under the pejorative label of “migrants” within Russian society.
Europe’s Capacity to Absorb
As the number of people displaced globally tops 100 million for the first time ever and more and more conflicts erupting worldwide, it has never been so pressing for the EU countries to kickstart their resettlement programs.
Last summer, the EU hosted an unprecedented forum on refugee resettlement — bringing together EU countries, Canada, the US and civil society organizations — with the goal of reviving this vital refugee protection tool.
"I want more people to come safely to Europe, so fewer people will risk their lives," EU commissioner Ylva Johansson told attendees. "If we show leadership and ambition, I am sure that many more will follow our lead".
Johansson's words were a welcome reminder that the EU can and should lead by example on refugee protection.
In order to maintain the EU's credibility as a global geopolitical and humanitarian actor, it must now extend the same approach to people fleeing equally devastating contexts elsewhere. But worryingly, the commitments made by EU leaders at the forum have not translated into action. With the Ukrainian refugee flow, people coming from other parts of the world have started to be treated rather differently.
The International Rescue Committee is calling on EU states to make bold pledges in the coming weeks, committing to resettle more than 40,000 refugees across regions in need next year, in addition to at least 8,500 Afghan refugees. This is to avoid creating a biased approach when accepting the refugees into EU territory. This figure is entirely achievable, and just a drop in the ocean compared to the 4 million Ukrainian refugees they welcomed over the past seven months.
“If it fails to do so, the EU should expect to face accusations of creating a two-tier asylum system whereby some refugees are welcomed with dignity and respect, and others face discriminatory treatment.”
To point out emerging double standards on this topic, the UN Syria Commission chair Paulo Pinheiro regretted what he said are "depressing" double standards of hosting refugees when comparing the treatment received by Syrians and Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion of their homeland in late February.?
"There is openness and generosity vis-a-vis the Ukraine that I don't criticize at all. They deserved it. But I would very much like that the same treatment will be applied to the Syrian refugees," Pinheiro stated.
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The Pushbacks: Inhumane state behavior
The word sounds so harmless. Just a nudge, given to someone encroaching on your personal space. It sounds deserved, push-back, as if you were pushed and had to respond by applying your own pressure. Innocent, almost.
The word has become the euphemism of choice to refer to actions taken by border authorities to actively deny people from entering a country — or even forcefully returning them to the country they came from.
'Pushback' hides unusual cruelty towards humans — aside from a flagrant violation of rules set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.
This week, German publication Der Spiegel, together with German transparency campaigners FragDenStaat published in full a report written by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which shows how Frontex, the European border agency, was involved in multiple violations of human rights.
The Olaf report also shows how Frontex used European taxpayer money — your money, if you live in the EU — to co-fund units doing pushbacks in "at least six instances." And then hid that fact from European Parliament investigations.
In reading the report, the callousness of border agencies stands out. In how they refer to "human rights oversight under their Fundamental Rights Officer to a Khmer Rouge dictatorship led by mass murderer Pol Pot," as Nielsen writes today.
But also in how the agency denies being aware of the Greek coast guard pulling a boat full of people out to sea — even though it's documented in the report a Frontex surveillance flight made note of it.
'Pushback' is the embodiment of this callousness, and one that has somehow found its place in how media covers human rights violations that see people stripped of their belongings and phones and towed out to sea on propulsionless boats. It's a disgrace.
Pushbacks in the Mediterranean
In 2021, between Italy and Libya, 32,425 people were pushed back to Libya in 2021. At the Spanish border, an unprecedented number of 4,404 deaths were registered in 2021 and recently 64 people went missing at the Nador-Melilla border. Evidence of atrocious pushbacks at the Greek-Turkish borders have been adding up and came under scrutiny of the European Parliament
Turkish authorities arbitrarily arrested, detained, and deported hundreds of Syrian refugee men and boys to Syria between February and July 2022, Human Rights Watch said today.
Deported Syrians told Human Rights Watch that Turkish officials arrested them in their homes, workplaces, and on the street, detained them in poor conditions, beat and abused most of them, forced them to sign voluntary return forms, drove them to border crossing points with northern Syria, and forced them across at gunpoint.
“In violation of international law Turkish authorities have rounded up hundreds of Syrian refugees, even unaccompanied children, and forced them back to northern Syria,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Although Turkey provided temporary protection to 3.6 million Syrian refugees, it now looks like Turkey is trying to make northern Syria a refugee dumping ground.”
Recent signs from Turkey and other governments indicate that they are considering normalizing relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In May 2022, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an of Turkey announced that he intends to resettle one million refugees in northern Syria, in areas not controlled by the government, even though Syria remains unsafe for returning refugees. Many of those returned are from government-controlled areas, but even if they could reach them, the Syrian government is the same one that produced over six million refugees and committed grave human rights violations against its own citizens even before uprisings began.?