Issue 26: July-August 2003

More refugees turning to
human smugglers – report

The institution of asylum is "under grave threat" as nations erect ever-higher walls during the war on terrorism, leading many asylum seekers to engage human smugglers as their only means of potentially reaching sanctuary, according to a new analysis from the United Nations University. 

Published by UNU Press and launched on World Refugee Day, June 20, the book Refugees and Forced Displacement says that while most decision-makers believe human smuggling is characterized by the illegal transportation of economic migrants, it is estimated more than half of those smuggled into Europe are seeking asylum – many of them people who feel imperiled and persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political beliefs. 

Contributing expert Khalid Koser of University College London, says the rapid rise in human smuggling reflects in part "an unintended consequence of restrictive asylum policies."

Governments have tried to deter asylum seekers by designating "safe" countries of origin whose citizens are effectively precluded from asylum, visa regulations, sanctions against smugglers, shifting the burden of assessing and processing claims to adjoining territories, physical closing of borders, detention of asylum seekers, and the withdrawal of welfare support.

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Those who have the capacity to extend security to people perilously lacking it have a basic human obligation to do so," says editor Edward Newman of UN University.  However, there has been a "shift from the protection of asylum seekers to protection from them."

Said UNU Rector Hans van Ginkel: "Accommodating the needs of asylum seekers and refugees is an important moral responsibility for the world community.  However, as we mark World Refugee Day 2003, it is clear that the start of a war on terror and other developments have shut the doors of sanctuary to many people in need of shelter from religious and political persecution, or from bloody violence and conflict.  Raising international awareness of these problems is critical to their solution and we hope this book makes an important contribution in that regard."

According to Dr. Koser, advocates are concerned that successfully stamping out smuggling "would deprive many people of the possibility of seeking asylum in the industrialized nations" but they can hardly be seen speaking out in favor of such an exploitative and dangerous underground trade.

Asylum advocates "have been surprisingly reticent in the human smuggling debate," he says, "and legislation by states to stop smuggling has advanced more or less unchallenged, despite its implications for asylum seekers. As a result, some advocates have begun to lament that the debate has already been lost, and that asylum in industrialized nations may be doomed."

Vulnerable to exploitation

Dr. Koser says researchers in 1994 created a very rough estimate of 240,000 to 360,000 illegal migrants to Western Europe.  Using the same analytical model with limited but more current data, he offers a comparable estimate today of 250,000 to 350,000 illegal migrants – 35,000 to 100,000 of them smuggled – to Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom alone.

Those smuggled are often left in transit countries for significant periods without access to potential support.  Significant sums are charged by smugglers – a journey from Afghanistan to Western Europe was recently estimated to cost between US$8,000 and $12,000.  Many of those smuggled are indebted and/or afraid of being identified and repatriated, and highly vulnerable to exploitation.  Returnees can face the risk of persecution for having sought asylum or confrontation by money lenders, says Dr. Koser.  "The implication is that these returnees might genuinely need to escape Iran, and might have no option other than to turn once again to smugglers."

While he accepts and supports stronger measures to combat human smuggling, he argues that the problem requires national governments to revisit and address the issue of asylum effectively.  He urges asylum advocates to unite around recommended policy options that could operate in tandem with anti-smuggling policies.

These include:

• In-country processing or in-country protection. Asylum seekers need smugglers "because they need to move. If movement can be eliminated from asylum, then so can smuggling," Dr. Koser says;

• Processing in a local country, to which legal access can be guaranteed;

• The reintroduction of quotas in West European countries. Many asylum seekers employ smugglers because they have no legal alternatives. Quotas would mean that at least a proportion of asylum seekers could enter asylum countries legally.

Refugees from conflict 

Edward Newman

Dr. Newman of UN University says more restrictive Western policies reflect concerns about asylum seekers and refugees "as sources of instability and even potential sources of terrorism" but there’s scant evidence of any connection. 

He says internal conflicts in some regions today are characterized by the deliberate targeting and forcible displacement of civilians as a primary objective, systematic rape as a weapon of war, ethnic cleansing, the use of child soldiers, and a high proportion of civilian casualties – up to 90% in some conflicts. The objective of such tactics is not necessarily victory over a rival political force or agenda, but the continuation of violence itself. 

An estimated 25 million people worldwide are displaced within their own country’s borders due to armed conflict, internal strife, and serious violations of human rights, essentially, ‘internal refugees’ who would be considered refugees if they crossed an international border, Dr. Newman says. 

Urgent steps are needed to deal with the problems faced by victims of mass forcible displacements, 75–80 per cent of whom are women and children.  Such refugees need protection from violence, housing, sustenance, education, health care, employment – "but, having not crossed a border, they do not benefit from the same system of international protection and assistance. 

"Responsibility for providing protection and assistance to internally displaced persons rests with their government.  However, governments are often unable or unwilling to meet these obligations fully, sometimes even deliberately displacing populations or denying them their rights. There is thus a pressing need to bridge the institutional, legal, and policy gap that has so often hampered effective responses to the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons. 

"At a minimum, these include the establishment of an international rapid reaction capacity along with credible safe haven policies to respond to refugee emergencies, and the promotion and building of civil society infrastructure and human rights monitoring in local communities in conflict," says Dr. Newman. 

The UN and the international system generally are ill-equipped to address such challenges today and non-governmental organizations, especially human rights NGOs, are vital to ensuring the protection of forcibly displaced people, he says. 

"The legal rights of refugees – as refugees and also as humans with human rights – are often demonstrably unfulfilled or violated," according to Dr. Newman.  "Opportunities and assistance to refugees and displaced people are in large part a reflection of politics, geostrategic interests, and fickle international donor and media priorities."

Updated definition of refugee needed 

The global refugee regime – based on the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees – was originally intended as a temporary Cold War arrangement to help people fleeing communism.  Existing international legal instruments are somewhat out of date but "not as deficient as their application by contemporary governments leads one to believe," according to co-editor Dr. Joanne van Selm of the Washington DC-based Migration Policy Institute. 

A refugee is defined as someone who, "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality [or of habitual residence], and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."

That definition needs updating to reflect contemporary circumstances and to clarify the distinction between refugees and economic migrants. 

In Bosnia–Herzegovina, Georgia (Abkhazia), Angola, Rwanda, Congo, Palestine/Israel, and many other places, displaced populations have been the critical element in continuing conflict and instability, the obstruction of peace processes, and the undermining of attempts at economic development, she says. 

Dr. Newman says terrorist attacks and the ensuing war on terror underlined connections between human displacement and international security.

"It became clear that the origins of the unchecked fundamentalist Taliban, and their links to al-Qaida, lay in the long-term refugee camps of Pakistan. Dispossessed, aggrieved, and rootless populations are a potential breeding ground for radical political movements and terrorism inside and across borders. 'Permanent' refugee camps can give rise to enmity among the displaced and provide a source of insurgency and instability elsewhere, especially when those people, often not receiving the attention of a government or international organization, are preyed upon by people with evil intent and the means to sway followers and carry out their destructive plans."

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the perpetrators of which arrived in the US mostly as students, the most affected immigrant group in terms of admissions policies in the US has been resettled refugees, according to Dr. van Selm.  The admission quota was set at a ceiling of 70,000 for 2002. However, only 26,000 were admitted as the programme stalled with new security controls in place and as travel was curtailed for Immigration and Naturalization Service officers who determine claimants' status.

"The most vulnerable group – refugees – have been the target of the greatest number of new controls, although they were already the most scrutinized arrivals."

Other key points in the UNU study: 

• The conventional definition of international security is premised on military defense of national territory. But refugees are in various contexts both a cause and a consequence of insecurity. Management of refugee movements and protection of displaced people should be an integral part of conflict settlement and peacebuilding, and an integral element of regional security;

• Repatriation has become the solution of the international community to the global refugee problem. Local integration and resettlement in third countries have been de-emphasized, applicable to less than one percent of the world's refugees. Repatriation is focused on early return, often without satisfactory knowledge of the sustainability of return, or the needs of reintegration, or of the conditions necessary for long-term development;

• The "massive intervention-quick fix" approaches typical of humanitarian emergencies rarely yield durable results. The disappointing performance of international assistance during emergencies underscores the prevalent lack of coordination, duplication of efforts, fragmented programs, and expenditures too large for local absorption that so often characterize these situations;

• Approximately 75 to 80 percent of the forcibly displaced are women and children. Women suffer differently during conflict and displacement and have particular needs. The experience of flight and displacement has different implications for male and female members of a population;

• Viewed from a distance, displaced people are often portrayed as helpless victims of circumstance, deserving of compassion and assistance. This imagery changes dramatically when refugees and asylum seekers make their way to the developed world to seek protection.  They are transformed from passive objects of compassion into untrustworthy actors who provoke a sense of fear.

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