The recent, unending tragedies around us and the ritualistic expressions of horror, mixed with disgust and insensitivity, brought back to me an opinion that I had shared in this paper in October 2013.
I had then expressed the view that our government – with its record in the UN – should take the initiative in the UN for diplomatic action in order to encourage a serious (as distinct from current efforts) approach to the problem of people flows.
The recent interview in The Guardian with Professor Francois Crepeau, Special Rapporteur on Migration of the UN Human Rights Council is encouraging. Crepeau knows our side of the story well. He was here last year. He has offered one possible angle, based on absorption of people.
That will surely help to address one aspect of the immediate problem: his grounds are solid – based on pragmatic humanitarian, and security grounds.
Above all his approach is not just to seek ‘a solution’ – because there is no single solution to this complex phenomenon which manifests itself all over the world in various forms.
Take for example the phenomenon faced by the US with regard to, among other people flows, the 52,000 unaccompanied children who made their way from Central America, who were apprehended last year.
Or Australia’s continuing surrealist deals with Nauru to take asylum seekers.
These are no remedies; the flow might slow down or even stop for a while, but it will resume. Fighting the people smugglers, as Europe is talking about these days, is laudable but naive.
The Australians tried that too not so long ago, then changed their tack. The smugglers are the product of the phenomenon, not the cause. In any case many – if not most – do not come by sea anyway: check the Eastern European flank of Europe. “Rapid return” will not stop the phenomenon either – many of those who try the crossing are on the third or fourth try.
If there is no immediate solution, then there has to be one that seeks to manage it. We need a strategy by which the multiple manifestations of this phenomenon can be analysed, assessed and actions planned over a time frame.
A phenomenon that has been building up over several decades cannot be reversed overnight – and let’s face it, the West has plenty to answer for when looking at the causes of the current mess.
A phenomenon that has been building up over several decades cannot be reversed overnight
If there is the chaos that we have today, it is because there is no consolidated perception, let alone culture, on which policy can be agreed upon to contain and reverse the phenomenon.
Our Prime Minister warned in 2013, that the Mediterranean risked becoming the largest cemetery – a phrase that has been repeated by world leaders in the expected chorus of sorrow at the recent chapter of horror; some of it genuine no doubt.
As I said then, this problem will not go away, it will continue to grow.
The UN needs mobilising – and it is up to governments to do that. Left to itself, the UN will turn this – as it has done with so many other issues – into endless resolutions but no action.
The UN Human Rights Commission took up this issue first in the early 1980s, triggered by the boat people in South East Asia and the movements in and from the Horn of Africa and elsewhere.
Sadruddin Aga Khan, an icon of humanitarianism, former High Commissioner for Refugees, who knew very well the problem of the gap between rhetoric and reality in the UN, wrote to the Commission in handing in his report in 1980:
“… It is my considered opinion that if we are to succeed in any measure to spare future generations the spectre of millions of uprooted people, more is required than reports and resolutions, however pertinent and useful they may be.”
Don’t waste time asking where the UN Human Rights Council is with this issue – nowhere, as the reality on our shores tell us. Not only has there been no action, but governments have developed a preference to compete with each other in their search for being more tawdry than their neighbouring ‘developed’ country.
It will get worse, as it has done for so long.
I still think it is time for Malta to make the move to mobilise the international community in putting a frame around this phenomenon and developing a strategy to manage its multiple manifestations – now more than ever. It is in our national interest to do so.
John Pace is a former secretary to the UN Commission on Human Rights.