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What the Refugee Crisis tells us about Western values! (Part II and End)
What the Refugee Crisis tells us about Western values! (Part II and End)
16/11/15
What conditions do these migrants face in Europe?
Most European countries are signatories
to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and are legally bound to uphold the
principle of ‘non-refoulement’–
which forbids the rendering of a true victim of persecution to his or her
persecutor. European countries are ethically and legally bound to “not return”
these fleeing people to a situation where their life is at risk.
Instead of embracing this principle,
the consensus in the corridors of powers in Europe
has been to put the fleeing Muslim refugees at risk by closing their borders.
Article 33 of the UN Refugee Convention, 1951, enjoins states not to
“expel or return (refouler)
a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his
(or her) life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Many Europeans leaders, despite the sensitivity some of them have demonstrated
towards the plight of the refugees, have decided to stand the application of
this international law principle on its head.
The current refugee situation is now
also a global crisis of responsibility and the UN system and all leaders of the
world need to come together to ensure that those fleeing war and repression are
treated in a safe, orderly and dignified way. As Prime Minister Stefan Löfven
of Sweden – the largest per
capita receiver of asylum seekers in Europe –
told the General Assembly’s 70th session, “We should dramatically increase the
number of resettlement places, expand legal avenues for migration, and base all
our efforts on the principle of non-refoulement and the right to seek asylum. And it is
extremely urgent that all countries of the European Union treat the people
seeking refuge in the Union in a spirit of
humanity, solidarity and shared responsibility.”
What the mirror is reflecting today is
the utter failure of political leadership and collective political imagination
in the face of native anxieties over possible demographic and cultural change. Germany was the
only country that showed some signs of moral leadership by agreeing to suspend
application of the Dublin Regulation for arriving Syrian refugees but that too
was short-lived. It is the only country which has opened its doors and borders
to all those searching for refuge and a safe haven and is now expecting to take
in about 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of this year – more refugees than
the 626,000 the entire European Union took in last year. Ordinary Germans in
cities like Munich
donated so much that the police had to ask them to stop because they were
overwhelmed with the sheer volume of aid items.
But Europe’s
status quo remains unfriendly to refugees. The problem today has assumed
unmanageable proportions because Europe is
struggling to bridge the huge gap between political realism and the need for a
policy response embedded in empathy. While the EU made a collective
resettlement commitment for 20,000 refugees, this adds up to only 10 per cent
of the total Syrian refugee population, as the latter, according to UNHCR
statistics, may be as large as 400,000.
Migrant detention centers across the
continent, including in France, Greece, and Italy have all invited charges of abuse and neglect over the
years. Many rights groups contend that a number of these detention centers violate
Article III (PDF) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which
prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.
“We used to think
of migration as a human security issue: protecting people and providing
assistance,” says Brookings Institution’s Senior Fellow Khalid Koser. “Now we clearly perceive—or misperceive—migration
as a national security issue. And the risk of securitizing migration is that
you risk legitimizing extraordinary responses.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has
said that European Union states "must share the responsibility for
refugees seeking asylum," arguing that failing them will betray the bloc's
values.
At a news conference in Berlin on Monday, Merkel
pressed once again for quotas to spread asylum-seekers out among more countries
in the 28-nation grouping.
"If Europe fails on the question
of refugees, this close connection with universal civil rights ... will be
destroyed and it won't be the Europe we
want," she said.
The hostile
response of central and eastern European heads of states to the prospect of
accepting Syrian refugees is emblematic of a wider problem of democracy and
liberalism in these countries.
We currently stand before a page of
European history characterised by the unacceptable violation of the most basic
human rights. We are confronted by images that portray human beings - children,
women, men, families - fleeing, in search of a better future.
For years, this continuous massacre has
been carrying on day after day. We cannot remain indifferent to the tragedy
that is unfolding on our doorstep.
The crimes we now witness daily are an offence
to all of humanity. Europe, tainted by
currents of xenophobia and racism, has turned its back on its own values; to
disregard the suffering of another human being is an act of violence.
These people - many families, even some
with babies - are undertaking long and perilous journeys to flee situations of
extreme poverty or war, tragedies that they want to leave behind. Before
setting off, some of them suffered torture and harassment.
If no one reacts to those pictures of
little Aylan Kurdi, who drowned at sea, or if people fail to act collectively,
then we can quite simply state, amid deafening silence, that humanity is dead.
The unacceptable
human rights violations demonstrated in the photos of children that have been
filling up newspaper pages and social media mirror the inadequacy and the
failure of the measures put in place to help these people.
If there was ever a moment when the entire
architecture of modern international law has been so summarily put to disuse,
then this is it. Now is the time for developing countries to take the
lead in co-creating new approaches in international law, upholding
existing guidelines for refugees while pushing for even more humane
standards./.
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All comments [ 15 ]
Much of that crisis can be laid at the feet of President Obama who has failed to use the power of the U.S. to stop rogue dictators like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
So pity world! Today, more than 19 million people have been forced to flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and oppression, and every day an estimated 42,500 more join them.
Now we can obviously see the hypocrisy of Western morals and values.
From North Africa to Iraq, people are fleeing war, extremism, and persecution. They are running away from the bloody consequences of the Western-backed democratic experiments.
The U.S. administration just insists on a regime change in Syria and moralizes about the humanitarian catastrophe playing out before our eyes in North Africa and Southeastern Europe.
Opening borders of European and North American states to desperate people fleeing war and persecution would be a moral thing to do.
Yeah, It would also correspond to the essential democratic values that Western political elites are frequently talking about.
Why is it that the EU, Canada, and the U.S. are so reluctant to once again become a heaven to desperate civilians fleeing for their lives?
It is true that Europe was indeed the birthplace of Socrates, Michelangelo, Kant and Beethoven. It is also true that Europe was the birthplace of Fascism, Nazism, racism, and nationalism.
Over time, crises have shown us both the best and the worst the West has to offer. At present, we are seeing its darker shades.
The West is once again torn between its intellectual heritage of enlightenment and humanism on one side, and its religious and ethnic wars, its xenophobia, racism and nationalism, on the other.
The current refugee situation is now also a global crisis of responsibility
We currently stand before a page of European history characterised by the unacceptable violation of the most basic human rights
Now is the time for developing countries to take the lead in co-creating new approaches in international law involving human rights
right, the reality demonstrates that now the West values are not right
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