EU Action Plan Against Migrant Smuggling (EUC Report)

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I too had the privilege of serving on the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee and would like in this debate to draw attention to the evidence that we heard from the NGOs, Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International, and to pay tribute to the important work that they do in the context of Operation Sophia. Other NGOs, including Save the Children and the Red Cross, are also involved, but Amnesty and MSF were invited to give evidence to our inquiry.

Amnesty’s report of a dramatic increase in deaths as a result of shipwrecks was instrumental in prompting the EU emergency summit that resulted in the reinstatement of a search-and-rescue operation. MSF told us that when 1,305 deaths were recorded in April 2015—a massive increase compared with the same month only a year before—it took the unprecedented step of launching its own rescue boats, and has to date rescued nearly 24,000 people. Both these organisations supported our conclusion that, although search and rescue was essential, the objective of targeting and disrupting the networks of traffickers and smugglers was an impossible challenge. Indeed, Amnesty has received accounts that many of those intercepted and believed to be smugglers were probably just refugees who had been nominated the person in charge of the boat. Amnesty said that those at the top of the smuggling chain are,

“no doubt making huge profits and probably go nowhere near anyone they are smuggling”.

Both Amnesty and MSF confirmed that closing down certain routes was no deterrent to smugglers, who quickly find alternative routes. These were usually even more dangerous and more costly to the refugees than the previous routes.

Amnesty also impressed on us the scale of the migration challenge and put it into perspective with the specific challenge for Europe. The level of migration into what we have called the “magnet” of western Europe is unprecedented, but it is not disproportionate when looked at globally. As we have heard, at the end of 2013 there were 10.5 million refugees globally and by mid-2015—less than two years later—this had gone up to 15 million. We were reminded that these figures leave out the 5 million Palestinian refugees. These numbers are difficult enough to grasp as statistics, never mind as real people trying to stay alive and doing the best for their families. But despite the magnet of Europe, the vast majority of the world’s refugees—86% according to Amnesty—are being hosted not by European countries but in the developing world.

MSF gave evidence about the desperate situation of refugees as they wait in Libya for the chance to board a boat to Europe. Conditions are dehumanising. Refugees may wait for weeks or months, and many are subject to violence and abuse, including forced prostitution. Both MSF and Amnesty viewed with grave concern the suggestion by the Prime Minister in March that Operation Sophia might return boats and refugees back to Libya. The NGOs said that this would merely return severely abused people to the hands of their abusers and would just present the smugglers with a further opportunity to exploit the same people for even more money. Only yesterday, Amnesty published a report with an even graver warning: the EU’s plans to co-operate with Libya’s transitional Government on migration policy is harming refugees and is very likely to result in further shocking human rights violations.

We were also made aware of some degree of tension between NGOs operating in the area covered by Operation Sophia and the military authorities. The director-general of the EU military staff told us that one NGO was advising migrants against giving information to military officials about the smuggling networks. MSF told us that it had never come across this, but our witness from Amnesty said that there had been reports of volunteers and NGOs feeling intimidated in their work by the authorities. This tension is clearly undesirable and ultimately unhelpful for the refugees. In the light of the committee’s conclusions on the importance of intelligence gathering and sharing, I hope that relations between the military authorities and the NGOs can be improved and tensions resolved.

Finally, the NGOs stressed to us the importance of creating safe and legal routes as the only means to prevent the market for smugglers continuing to grow. Amnesty proposed three options: first, a resettlement programme; secondly, an increase in family reunion; and thirdly, a system of humanitarian visas to people to come and claim asylum—a strategy it said had been used so far by only Brazil and France.

We are very grateful to the NGOs which took the time to contribute to our inquiry and, of course, for the committed humanitarian work they undertake every day. Like the committee, they took the view that the challenge of migration and the plight of refugees cannot be resolved until and unless the root causes of the problem are addressed. This is, as others have said, a massive and massively urgent challenge for all EU member states.