Europe's Shame: The Deadly Refugee Crisis
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One in 40 is the dreadful death rate facing refugees attempting the perilous crossing from Libya to Italy in overloaded rubber dinghies. It’s the shameful product of Europe’s pitiful response to the growing refugee crisis. Angela Merkel declared: “Wir schaffen das” – “we can do this” – when she flung open Germany’s doors to refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq for six months in 2015. But she failed to take German public opinion with her and her words quickly turned hollow. Led by Germany, Europe’s approach to refugees in the last two years has evolved from Merkel’s misplaced optimism in “we can do this” to a shameful “out of sight, out of mind”.
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All hopes of a united European response to the refugee crisis seem to have evaporated. There is still no network of commonly funded reception centres. The cornerstone of the European approach remains the hopelessly outdated Dublin regulation, which insists that refugees must be processed by the first EU country they set foot in and can be sent back there if they journey beyond it. And so the injustice of two of Europe’s poorer nations – Italy and Greece –remains. Meanwhile, Europe, led by Merkel, has recalibrated its efforts towards preventing refugees from reaching Europe. The refugee crisis has never been a European crisis: Only a small fraction of the world’s refugees make it there. But in the last two years, as the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe’s shores has fallen as a result of this change in approach, it has become even less so.
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There are two main routes that refugees take to Europe: the Aegean route, via Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, and the central Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy. The Aegean route is now almost completely closed: partly as a result of much stricter Balkan border controls and partly because of the EU-Turkey deal that saw Turkey accepting the return of all irregular migrants arriving in Greece in exchange for billions in financial aid and visa liberalisation for Turkish nationals.
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The situation in the central Mediterranean is even worse. The European response has shifted from an emphasis on the search-and-rescue efforts that resulted in a significant decline in drownings in late 2015 to working with the Libyan coastguard to stop the flow altogether. Well-meaning attempts to destroy the wooden boats used by smugglers have driven refugees to attempt the crossing on even more dangerous rubber dinghies. The Italian government, which is not getting adequate support from the EU, is accusing NGOs operating their own search-and-rescue boats close to Libyan waters of encouraging people-smuggling. But these are desperate people, who have survived treacherous journeys to Libya and endured weeks and months in Libyan detention camps where forced labour, rape and torture are rife. There is no evidence that halting search-and-rescue efforts will do anything except push the death toll up. UN agencies say there is evidence that the Libyan coastguard is co-operating with smugglers, selling boats it seizes on to other smugglers and returning migrants to appalling detention facilities.
