The Guardian view on the Mediterranean migrants: every life is a precious life
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Version 0 of 1. A proud father who is fleeing persecution, a mother who wants to give her family a chance – every migrant who risks their lives in the Mediterranean has a story that any European would recognise. In the blank faces of the stricken survivors being helped from the sea off Rhodes, or shuffling dazed down the gangway into a strange Sicilian port, they can only be imagined. They are easily dwarfed by the scale of the unfolding drama in the Mediterranean, but in any discussion of what should be done, that particularity is the most important single thing to remember. Politicians deal in policy, and too often, particularly in the middle of an election campaign, they follow rather than lead opinion. Theresa May, the longest-serving of Europe’s interior ministers, has clout in Brussels. But like her colleague Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, and no doubt David Cameron at Thursday’s emergency European council meeting on the migration situation, she talks of the need to tackle the symptoms, not the cause. They all play down the moral responsibility of saving lives and prioritise the strengthening of the defences of fortress Europe. They defend the substitution of the smaller EU-backed inshore exercise Triton for Mare Nostrum, the Italian search-and-rescue exercise, in terms not of humanity but pragmatism. Mr Hammond now claims Triton is a search-and-rescue operation too. But both its range and its boats are too small to make a proper contribution. That is the first thing that must change. Second, while each migrant is facing their own crisis, for Europe their arrival is not one, whatever the inflated language of the political response. It is a problem that needs to be managed. The safety of these refugees, whether they are fleeing a state that has failed politically or economically, is a duty not just for the country in which they make landfall but for the whole of the EU. And while it is true that there is no common EU immigration policy and that there would be great resistance to any attempt to create one, that is no excuse for inaction. The UNHCR-run resettlement policy has been obstructed by the attitude of individual governments running scared of anti-migrant rhetoric. It is true, but not sufficient, for Britain to say that it has made generous contributions to the refugee camps in countries bordering Syria. In the context of the UK’s net immigration of 250,000, the request to provide thousands of resettlement places can be accommodated, as long as it is done with extra investment so that host communities are not put at a disadvantage. That means reinstating the migration impacts fund. The 10-point plan agreed at Monday’s council of ministers is all about enforcement. Measures such as destroying the traffickers’ boats will not be easy to implement. Like the continuing attempt to curtail Somalian piracy, it may even involve a military element. There are signs that the EU would like to be able to subcontract its problem to third countries. Australia, which has faced acute migrant pressure for a decade, funds programmes in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to detain people in transit. But there are few countries on the south side of the Mediterranean that are likely to be either willing or able to do Europe’s job for it. An attempt last year in Libya ended ignominiously, and a similar move in Tunisia is now reduced to a skeleton staff. Moving in order to do better is as old as humanity. So is fleeing persecution. The long-term answer for the Mediterranean boat people is to put global stability and economic prosperity at the heart of foreign policy. The short-term answer is a managed resettlement programme so that people do not have to risk their lives at sea. Until then, we have an unbreakable moral obligation to save them. |