The Guardian view on the refugee crisis: Europe must meet this moral challenge
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Version 0 of 1. The British government’s refusal to support search and rescue missions to save refugees in the Mediterranean is an outrageous and immoral act. It suggests a government so alarmed by Ukip that it has lost all sense of proportion. The Italian-funded Mare Nostrum exercise, mobilised after 300 refugees drowned off Lampedusa a year ago, has saved thousands of lives. When it ends at the weekend, it will be replaced by Operation Triton, managed by the European Union border agency, Frontex, and working only in coastal waters, with no remit to rescue refugees. Britain is to provide just one officer to monitor refugee movements. The home secretary, Theresa May, argues that saving lives operates – unintentionally, she acknowledges – as a “pull factor”. What a grotesque betrayal of the founding principles of the EU, an organisation built on the promise of peace, prosperity and asylum for the desperate. What an indictment of timid politicians. This refugee crisis is not a uniquely European problem. But the swift and serial collapse of states across the Middle East and north Africa, from Iraq to Eritrea, has precipitated a mass flight that the secretary general of the Norwegian refugee council, Jan Egeland, believes is the worst since 1945. According to data gathered by the European University in Florence, in the eight months to August this year, 25,000 people from Syria arrived by sea in Italy. As many again are coming from Eritrea. Thousands more have fled Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia. They do not only head north to Europe. Impoverished Syrians are begging in Mauritania. Libya, Jordan and Lebanon have hundreds of thousands of refugees, preparing for another winter in barely adequate camps, with little education and no work. And of them all, Turkey carries by far the biggest burden. The number who are prepared to risk everything by crossing the Mediterranean is only a tiny proportion of the numbers forced from their homes. The scale of this challenge has simply not been recognised by a Europe in the grip of economic austerity and frightened by rising xenophobia. Only Sweden and Germany – which together, according to the Florence research, offered asylum to 42,000 Syrian refugees last year – emerge with credit. On the latest Home Office figures, Britain has resettled just 4,000. The scheme to offer help to the most vulnerable in refugee camps has so far brought in just 50 people. One of the biggest reasons for the surge in people prepared to pay preposterous amounts to smugglers for the uncertain prospect of reaching safety in Italy is that land routes into Europe are virtually closed. Europe’s failure to build a burden-sharing scheme to protect the cost to the poorest member countries like Greece and Bulgaria will have cost many refugee lives. It would be naive not to recognise that this great moral challenge is also a fraught political challenge. In the context of the rise of an anti-migrant right across the EU, it is understandable that the main political parties recognise and try to respond to voters’ anxieties. But that is not the same as adopting the policies of the xenophobes. The most absurd news this week is that the fencing used to protect world leaders at the Nato summit at Newport earlier this year is being re-erected as a barrier in Calais. How high does the government suppose the walls will need to be? There are sensible and achievable alternatives. The coalition can rightfully boast of its protection of the aid budget, but more – and more sophisticated – help is needed in, for example, Nigeria, where there are now 3 million internally displaced people as the Boko Haram insurgency in the north spreads towards the capital. Second, in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, where many Syrians have fled, both the refugee camps and the governments need more support. There is a real fear that the presence of so many displaced people could jeopardise stability. Third, the slow progress in Europe to negotiating a formula for burden-sharing must be accelerated, while avoiding panic measures. The latest research suggests that Sweden, Austria and Belgium take up to twice as many refugees as their economies justify, while the UK takes about 8% fewer. This is not Britain’s problem alone, but we should be leading the effort to solve it humanely. |