Fortress Europe, no room in the Inn for those seeking refuge

Europe is slowly shutting its doors to refugees to the detriment of human rights and human life writes Patrick O Brien who witnessed firsthand the mass exit of those fleeing war in Ukraine in 2022 to now having to return home to the unknown.

Has history taught us anything? When Jews started to flee Germany in the late 1930s, most countries refused to take them in. There was no international laws about this at the time, and since the rest of the world regarded them as German citizens, it was seen as not our problem.. Germany regarded them as belonging to a class below full citizens, which you could loosely translate as subjects. Many European countries even had protest movements regarding the small trickle that were let in. After the war, we realised that we had sent them back to their deaths. No one had, in 1939, imagined that Germany until 1933 regarded as arguably the most civilised country in the world would go on to murder their own citizens on an industrial scale. So the world said “never again”. International treaties regarding refugees were signed, and are adhered to up until this day.

More than two and a half years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most European countries are taking a harder line on accepting refugees who fled the war. On September 27, the Norwegian government for example, one of the first to announce that it would stop granting automatic asylum to all Ukrainians who request it, effective immediately. The European Union has responded to the refugee influx by reinforcing border controls, upgrading the fight against immigration, and attempting to harmonize “from below” asylum laws

Forced displacement around the world is at an all-time high, having reached 114 million persons by the end of 2023. Migrants are being driven from their homes by conflict, economic deprivation, climate change, and persecution. In response, the industrialized nations, including many in Europe, are emphasizing deterrence strategies to stem the flow of migrants to their countries. The large increase in migration to Europe in 2015-2016 has led to the rise of a number of populist governments focused upon stemming migrants from reaching Europe. The EU, led by President Ursula von der Leyen, has negotiated agreements with transit countries to entice them to prevent migrants from leaving or transiting through their countries on the way to Europe.  EU and international human rights law requires us to provide an adequate standard of living for those in receipt of reception conditions, which guarantees their subsistence and ‘protects their physical and mental health. I agree that having war refugees walking the streets of a foreign and sometimes hostile city in the middle of the night does not exactly represent protection of their physical or mental health. Perhaps if Europe was presented with a legal challenge to its treatment of our refugees, it might move a little more quickly in securing safe haven for those in limbo.

Specific nations, such as Italy, Greece, and Spain known as frontline countries have adopted policies and laws designed to deter migration and to limit asylum. Hungary and Poland, countries which have been generous in accepting Ukrainian refugees, have generally closed their borders to asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East.

Governments of the day failed to provide truthful and factual information about asylum seekers and refugees to the general public and play on xenophobic rhetoric to secure and retain political power.  Government policy and practice negatively informed public opinion towards refugees arriving by boat and led directly to the re-election of the Howard Liberal-Coalition government (who incidentally were trailing in the polls before the election).

I doubt there’s many people who are against the refugees as such. What I can imagine is that people are worried about the changes and challenges coming from the excessive wave of refugees. I believe that once people start to be affected negatively they tend to develop opinion against the newcomers.

The Israel-Lebanon conflict is still in its early days, and many of these refugees are, for now, going wherever they can. However, they illustrate the volume of forced displacement already underway. In time, many will make their way towards Europe, resulting in greater migratory pressure on the EU, much like the refugee crisis of 2015, when over a million refugees entered Europe mainly though not exclusively via Mediterranean routes. Europe must revalue its policies and remember, having watched the horrific images of Libyan mothers putting there children on to boats, it reminds me, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.