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REFUGEES: EUROPE SITS ON ITS HANDS IN RESPONSE TO THE TRAGEDY
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make their way to Europe, greater investments
in fences and controls are only provoking ever-
higher levels of danger, death, pain and human
suffering. What else has been made patently
clear is a lack of will to provide a safe, legal
means of arriving so that refugees would not be
forced to seek ever more dangerous routes.
We must keep in mind that for the refugees,
every new border fence the EU builds supposes
a search for an alternative, inevitably longer and
more perilous route. Likewise, every time a
Member State denies a visa to a person seeking
refuge in a safe country, it creates yet another
client for mafias that engage in human traffick-
ing, as these people see the voyage as the only
way to save their lives and those of their fami-
lies.
Nevertheless, no one wants to face up to the
severity of the situation. Unfortunately, we are
seeing how borders have become spaces in
which human rights are systemically violated
with total impunity on a daily basis and the val-
ue of a refugee’s life is considered nil compared
to that of people living safely within the bound-
aries of closely guarded frontiers.
More than 25,000 people have lost their
lives in the Mediterranean over the past fifteen
years. There have been over four hundred
deaths in what is now referred to as the largest
common grave on the planet since the begin-
ning of this year alone.
Furthermore, the most tragic aspect of these
deaths is that not a single one of them was the
result of chance, an accident or a natural catas-
trophe such as a tsunami or seaquake. It is time
to reflect and take stock of the perverse policies
that are being implemented here in Europe –
measures that are forcing refugees to risk their
lives in sea voyages undertaken in perilous cir-
cumstances. For the lack of safe alternatives for
reaching Europe, refugees are being forced to
place their welfare in the hands of soulless traf-
fickers who regard human tragedy and misfor-
tune as nothing more than an opportunity to
line their pockets. We must ask ourselves what
level of responsibility for this drama is actually
attributable to the inhumane border control
policies presently being implemented.
The right to asylum should and must be rec-
ognised, above all other considerations, as an
essential protection mechanism within a system
conceived to guarantee human rights.
Nevertheless, in the EU, particularly the context
of the current “refugee crisis”, this concept is
being sweep under the rug and an overwhelm-
ing priority placed on migrant flow manage-
ment.
Since 1999, the EU has developed a series of
legal instruments conceived to underpin a fu-
ture Common European Asylum System (CEAS)
intended to harmonise national legislation con-
cerning asylum procedures, reception condi-
tions and aspects of international protection.
Nonetheless, there remain differences between
the asylum systems of EU Member States that
result in refugees being treated differently ac-
cording to the country in which they apply for
asylum.
One aspect of current Spanish asylum policy
that is seriously compromising human rights has
been the sanctioning of “border rejections” ef-
fected by means of an amendment to the first
paragraph of the Tenth Additional Provision of
Organic Law 4/2000 regarding the rights and
freedoms of foreign nationals living in Spain and
their integration contained in the first final pro-
vision of the Organic Law on Public Security.
This provision, which impedes the identification
of persons requiring international protection
and their access to asylum procedures, violates
the non-refoulement
principle by which no
state is allowed to expel or return a person to a