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A self-inflicted crisis in Europe, arising from controversial border externalization policies, is unfolding with the predictability that many warned it would.
The EU’s decision to treat North Africa as a containment zone and the Mediterranean as a de facto moat has resulted in harrowing tales of abuse and torture and the deaths of migrants. It is a mortifying testament to the continent’s uncharacteristic shortsightedness.
Recent reports that reveal egregious violations of the basic rights of refugees on North African shores and even in Italy, including the detention of minors, illustrate the severe and often fatal consequences of Europe’s single-minded lunge to curb irregular migration at just about any cost.
Migrants face the prospect of exploitation, prolonged detention and even murder under policies funded, empowered and excused by European authorities.
Meanwhile, a digital system in Italy purportedly designed to streamline asylum procedures has instead created invisible barriers that not only deny migrants their rights but transform formerly altruistic European policies into conduits for the further exploitation and suffering of desperate people.
Worse yet, Brussels has gone further by striking agreements with aspiring despots known to have woeful human rights records, revealing a troubling tolerance for the horrific conditions endured by those detained at the periphery of the EU.
The migrants’ stories are sobering. While the number of arrivals in Italy has decreased notably, this supposed triumph masks a heinous reality funded by European taxpayers. One €90 million ($100 million) pact is bankrolling, under the guise of halting smuggling and upholding human rights, the worst kinds of human rights abuses on Europe’s doorstep.
EU-funded security forces reportedly engage in systematic gender-based violence, robbery, widespread detentions and, when holding facilities become overcrowded and migrants no longer have the means to bribe officials to overlook their presence, the abandonment of migrants in deserts.
Further testimonies by sub-Saharan migrants reveal that women, including those who are pregnant, are routinely subjected to sexual violence and many, including children, are left to perish without food or water.
The EU arrangement mentioned above, which has been praised by leaders such as Keir Starmer, the recently elected UK prime minister, exposes the willingness of the EU to compromise its ethical commitments and ideals in an attempt to prevent the political fallout of failing to act on migration, at any cost — even as the violations escalate and death toll mounts. It also betrays a disturbing and growing dissonance between Europe’s professed humanitarian values and the grim realities on the ground.
Survivors recount harrowing stories of torture and physical assaults, which raise serious questions about the apparent ease with which Europe is overlooking such violations of human dignity, and even allowing democracy to backslide, all for some perceived semblance of border control.
By reducing the policy solutions to a complex crisis such as migration to the level of a mere transaction, Europe not only compromises its moral stance but deepens its dependency on authoritarian regimes. It is therefore risking further paradoxes as it attempts to uphold the values it loudly champions globally, while ignoring abuses it funds and enables locally.
The EU has revealed a troubling tolerance for the horrific conditions endured by those detained at its periphery.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
The growing human cost of these aggressive European policies for the management of irregular migration now demands answers from the architects and backers of those policies about how much more abuse and suffering Europe is prepared to sanction in its desperate attempts to secure its borders.
Moreover, the lack of effective oversight and accountability within these agreements results in untold human suffering that extends beyond the haunting stories of targeted violence and neglect. Tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants now live in makeshift camps, devoid of necessities such as food, water and medical care. The UN and humanitarian organizations are denied access to these camps, exacerbating the plight of migrants who have little or nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
As previously stated, this neglect stands in sharp contrast to the EU’s avowed commitments as a champion and defender of human rights, especially where EU funding is concerned. It reveals a jarring inconsistency within the bloc’s own policies and a credibility crisis that undermines its moral standing.
The endorsement of this approach by influential leaders such as Starmer, despite the overwhelming evidence of abuses and corruption, signals a troubling sense of desperation in the need to persist with such incredibly flawed, short-sighted policies.
Starmer’s stated admiration for Italy’s “dramatic” reduction in numbers of migrant arrivals ignores unsettling realities about exactly how this decrease was achieved and a lack of evidence to suggest that it is sustainable. After all, the rising numbers of refugees, now estimated at more than 100,000, near the Tunisian city of Sfax, just one location on a vast “front line” that stretches from Morocco to Egypt, are testament to the self-defeating nature of European policies. They suggest it is likely there will be more attempts to cross the Mediterranean, despite the increasing use of woeful “strategies” intended to increase the non-financial penalties of taking to the boats.
Such deeply flawed strategies — through which the very security forces that are supposed to protect lives are instead insulated, funded and empowered to dismantle them — have become the real story, not Italy’s “success” in achieving a sustained drop in migrant arrivals during the first half of this year.
But it appears unlikely there will be meaningful changes to the situation, let alone a reversal, as long as European financial incentives continue to embolden the unaccountable actors, security forces and people traffickers alike who are responsible for inherent threats to human dignity that are rising exponentially.
Ultimately, Europe’s current trajectory sacrifices compassion on the altar of expediency. As reports of torture, gender-based violence and abandonment in the desert continue to pile up, they reveal an uncomfortable truth: Europe is now deeply entangled in a predicament of its own making and the profound human cost of its policies demands an immediate reevaluation of its strategy before its credibility is irreparably damaged.
• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. X: @HafedAlGhwell