Can a Country Stop the Flow of Refugees?
By Lucia Benavides, Contributor June 20, 2018
BARCELONA, Spain — Julian Körberer can still recall his surprise when standing aboard the deck of the Iuventa as it prepared to dock at the Italian island of Lampedusa last August, authorities welcomed him and the crew by seizing the vessel.
Körberer was a volunteer working for Jugend Rettet, the German nonprofit organization that operates the search-and-rescue vessel Iuventa. It was the height of summer, when the majority of migrants attempt the perilous crossing from Africa, through the Mediterranean and into Italy. The ship had just completed two search-and-rescue operations headed by the maritime rescue coordination centre in Rome.
But before the ship could dock, Italian police seized and impounded the vessel, taking it to Sicily. The police were following orders from an Italian prosecutor who said he was investigating the ship for allegedly aiding illegal immigration and colluding with smugglers.
“There was no sign of whatever investigation, it wouldn’t make sense that they would tell us,” Körberer recalls, adding that he and others working for Jugend Rettet spent the following weeks trying to understand on what grounds the ship was seized.
The fate of the Iuventa, still detained in Italy today, is a months-long case study playing out in Italian courts that is at the cross-currents of domestic politics, continental law and the continuing effort by refugees trying to establish a beachhead in the continent for a better life. This month, Italian authorities turned away another rescue vessel run by a French NGO operating in the Mediterranean. Spain says it will accept the ship – the Aquarius – that carried more than 600 migrants, including 123 unaccompanied minors.
Central to the question that the Iuventa case asks is whether countries can ever stop the flow of refugees – a question playing out in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The question also is playing out at the U.S.-Mexico border, where families fleeing violence in Central America have faced separation and deportation.
Decreasing Number of Refugee Arrivals
Italian authorities say the seizure of the Iuventa was done as a precautionary measure. Although no formal charges have been filed against the NGO, the Italian government can confiscate materials that can be used to commit the alleged crimes – in this case, the ship – as long as there’s an investigation underway. In April of this year, Italy’s Supreme Court upheld this stance when it rejected an appeal by Jugend Rettet to release the Iuventa.
But Körberer denies the Italian prosecutor’s allegations and says it’s all part of a larger plan to weaken the search-and-rescue capacity in the Mediterranean Sea.
Moreno-Lax says Italy has aimed to stem the flow of migrants in two ways. In early 2017, with the support of the EU, Italy signed a deal with Libya that agreed to work with the country’s military and border control forces to keep migrants from entering the country. The Libyan Coast Guard would either stop migrants from leaving Libya in the first place or intercept them at sea before reaching Italy.
As a result, hundreds of thousands are stuck in Libyan detention centers facing beatings, rape and other human rights violations; a situation the United Nations has called an “outrage to humanity.”
Now, Moreno-Lax says Italy is implementing the second step of its strategy: Keep the NGOs from bringing migrants back to Italy.
“[Italy] would like to stop search-and-rescue by NGOs because that sort of upsets this strategy of closing the Central Mediterranean route,” she says, adding that the presence of NGOs in the Mediterranean could get in the way of the Libyan Coast Guard intercepting migrants.
In a way, Italy’s plan is succeeding: while there were close to a dozen NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 2017, today there are only a few, Moreno-Lax says. And the number of migrants coming into Italy through the Mediterranean has also decreased: The United Nations’ migration agency says that number has dropped 76 per cent in 2018, compared to this time last year.[LB2]
But the decrease in arrivals doesn’t mean the problem is solved.
The Mediterranean crossing is usually the last stretch of a long trip for the migrants attempting to reach Europe – mostly from the Middle East and Africa fleeing poverty, climate change or war. And while the number of migrant arrivals by sea has decreased since the peak in 2015 and 2016 – when a total of 3 million people claimed asylum in Europe – the underlying causes pushing these people out of their home countries have not changed.
“The thing is, migration cannot be stopped,” Moreno-Lax says. “So if it’s not through the Central Mediterranean, there’s going to be other means of access.”
Moreno-Lax says there’s been an increase in migrant crossings in other areas. In the Western Mediterranean, there’s been a 55 per cent increase in crossings into Spain, compared to this time last year, mostly from Morocco or Algeria. In Bulgaria and Romania, more migrants are crossing from Turkey through the Black Sea.
In Italy, a Feeling of Abandonment
Since 2014, hundreds of thousands of migrants have arrived in Italian shores.
As a result, many Italians feel they’ve been left alone to deal with Europe’s immigration crisis, says Eugenio Cusumano, assistant professor of international relations at Universiteit Leiden, noting that politicians with a hardline stance against immigration began to win elections. Just last month, Italy’s new coalition government was sworn in. Its interior minister, Matteo Salvini, pledged to send half a million undocumented migrants home, saying that “the good times for illegals are over.” He also called the search-and-rescue NGOs bringing migrants back to Italy “substitute people-smugglers.”
The idea that NGOs are pull factors for migration is not new; some argue that the presence of rescue vessels encourages migrants to cross the Mediterranean Sea, knowing they’d be rescued and taken to European territory. But Cusumano says this argument has “no factual basis,” and many studies have found no correlation between the presence of search-and-rescue vessels and the number of migrants attempting to cross.
“Migrants have no idea whether there will be anyone at sea rescuing them,” Cusumano says. “If you are in Libya, and your life is already in danger, then trying your fortunes at sea would still be the most rational thing to do.”
Instead of targeting NGOs, many immigration lawyers argue that Europe needs a complete overhaul of its asylum and immigration policies. Yet the solution isn’t simple. While some countries are enforcing tougher border control, others are pushing for a more fair distribution of refugees. On June 28 and 29, an EU summit in Brussels is expected to discuss possible solutions that could help ease the influx of migrants for countries geographically poised to take them in, like Italy, Greece and Spain.
Iuventa volunteer Julien Körberer says the solution, however, isn’t getting NGOs out of the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, he adds, that could make the situation worse.
“If there are no NGOs anymore, there will be no one witnessing what’s going on down there,” says Körberer, who recently went on a rescue mission in the Mediterranean with the NGO SeaWatch. “I don’t want to be at sea in five years, still rescuing people.”
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