'When the boat comes in........'

The ‘boat people’ problem is not going away; no less than 32,000 have reached Italy this year, and 7,000 survivors have been plucked from the Med in the last few days. So maybe it’s time to get a bit of sense and sanity into the situation in place of the hysterical debates which have featured so far in both the media and political forums.

 

First up, Ed Miliband, your assertion that it is all Cameron’s fault because of his intervention in Libya is absurd even by your matchless standards. Perhaps you would have preferred Blair’s old friend Colonel Gadhafi to have survived.

 

This is not a ‘Libya’ problem. Although the harbours from which the boats set sail are mostly in Libya, the vast majority of boat people have no Libyan connection.

 

Neither are they all ‘economic migrants, ‘asylum-seekers’, or ‘benefits scroungers’. They are for the most part fleeing their native countries because they fear for their lives. They fall within the internationally-accepted definition:

 

‘refugees are individuals who:

• are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence;
• have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and
• are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution’.

However reluctant many countries may be in accepting refugees, there is a certain obligation; Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

The ECHR has ruled that boat people must be given a fair chance to apply for asylum. Even if rescued in international waters they cannot be sent back to the place of departure.

The greatest cause has been the war in Syria. Syrians comprise the largest single group of refugees in the biggest displacement of people since WW2 – about 12 million in total of which 4 million have fled the country. The second largest group is from Eritrea, a country that seems locked in endless civil war or insurgency. Between them, Syria and Eritrea account for about 100,000 boat people out of a 2014 total of just over 200,000.

Needless to say, there has been much hand-wringing in Brussels but not much in the way of action. But there are no easy options. International law is clear that ‘first instance’ refugees such  as those fleeing war zones should be granted asylum. EU law requires finger-printing in the country of first arrival which then has the task of dealing with asylum applications, and ‘strays’ , such as those in Sangatte, should be returned to the country of first arrival. In short, once refugees arrive Europe will be stuck with a large proportion of them, whatever the political ‘right’ might say.

Thousands of Syrians and Eritreans need to be parceled-out amongst all EU countries, but try selling that politically!

One option that has been trailed is that naval forces should stop the boat people at the port of departure. This will need the co-operation of the host country, but the ports are mostly in the hands of the rebel administration in Tripoli. Co-operation could be interpreted as ‘recognition’, so the problem has to give way to diplomatic niceties.

The result would be half-a-million people stuck in a country that doesn’t want them, where they have no wish to be, and from which they have nowhere to go.

The inevitability of all this is that; like it or not, Europe will possibly have to grant asylum to about half the arrivals. It is now being proposed that asylum assessment centres should be set up in North Africa. That looks like a tall order since much of the region is in a state of insurgency.

A consolation is that it is likely that most Syrians  might wish to go home once the country has been pacified.

But the inescapable and hard reality is that Europe will have to get used to the boat people staying for a very long time or forever.