Gabriella Józwiak :
The global development community must engage with political leaders and opinion formers to urgently change attitudes to migration, the executive director of think tank Overseas Development Institute has told Devex.
Kevin Watkins’ call comes ahead of a European Commission meeting on Wednesday, May 13, where European Union members will adopt a new agenda on migration. In part it aims to save the lives of thousands of migrants who die each year crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Speaking after EU member states announced new measures in April, Watkins dismissed the plans as “more of a face-saving measure for European political leaders than anything that’s going to make a substantive difference.”
In the same month the sinking of a Libyan fishing boat carrying up to 800 people, of which only 28 survived, prompted the European Commission to publish a 10-point plan to tackle the situation. The response included increasing financing for its marine patrol operations Triton and Poseidon and broadening their operational area. A few days later, at a special meeting of the European Council, EU leaders agreed to triple Triton’s resources, which costs between 1.5 million euros and 2.9 million euros ($1.7 million to $3.3 million) per month according to figures the commission published in February. Member states pledged additional vessels, aircraft and experts as part of the commitment. But Watkins said the promises were “minimalist” and did not tackle the underlying problem.
“What they’re now proposing for the increase on the Triton program will take Triton roughly back up to Mare Nostrum type spending levels,” he explained, referring to a former Italian navy patrol policy Triton replaced in November 2014.
“While Mare Nostrum was in operation thousands of people were dying in the Mediterranean, so you’ve gone back to a level that was clearly inadequate, and the numbers coming over are increasing not decreasing,” he continued.
The ODI chief pointed out that Triton is delivered by border control agency Frontex, which he said only operated in a narrow geographical area up to 10 kilometers from the coast.
“Frontex has made it absolutely clear that it’s not a search and rescue operation,” Watkins said. “It needs to be an integrated naval operation.” Council meeting attendees also agreed to prevent human trafficking by capturing and destroying smugglers’ vessels, to tackle the cause of illegal migration by reinforcing cooperation with countries of origin and transit especially around Libya, to implement a new return program for irregular migrants, and to offer more protection to refugees.
Watkins said leaders needed to provide long-term financial commitment to refugees in countries neighboring the ones they had escaped. The majority of the 4 million Syrian refugees, for instance, are living in camps in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. But international aid to provide basic services in those camps “is incredibly small.”
“The upshot is that refugees in those countries really have no hope, inadequate shelter, they can’t get their children in school, they can’t get access to decent health care facilities,” he said. “If you turn your back on a population of that size, as the international community has done, the reality is they are going to move – and Europe is an obvious destination point.”
Watkins asserted that European countries needed to work together to resettle refugees.
“Countries like Britain do very little, countries like Spain do virtually nothing, whereas Germany and Sweden actually resettle a lot of refugees,” he suggested. “It’s a very unequal, poorly coordinated system. We need a much more coherent and generous response than what we’ve got.”
The role of global development professionals, Watkins argued, was to increase political pressure to achieve these changes. He said organizations needed to produce more evidence and research linked to advocacy and policy change to make the case. He also called upon the community to “reshape the narrative” on migration. “We need to stop thinking about migration as a development problem and start seeing it more as a development opportunity,” ODI’s executive director said. “The development community has got into this unfortunate habit of treating the movement of people as a development failure. It’s a source of growth, innovation and opportunity and in an interconnected world it can be a fantastic force for reducing disparities between countries.” More than 1,800 people have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean. In 2014, the total death toll was 3,279 according to Frontex.
(Gabriella Józwiak is an award-winning journalist based in London. Her work on issues and policies affecting children and young people in developing countries and the U.K. has been published in national newspapers and magazines. )
