(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"The money on the table" was the message sent from the EU's extraordinary summit on the migration crisis in the Mediterranean on Thursday 23 April. Three hours into overtime, the heads of government of the EU countries agreed to strengthen the border surveillance program Triton, with extra allocations of six million euros a month. It is to this program that the Norwegian authorities will contribute a ship. The summit was called urgently after more than 2000 people lost their lives in recent weeks in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean. In total, more than 120 have crossed the sea in a refugee stream that is expected to increase strength throughout the year. According to the German news agency DPA, around one million migrants in Libya are still waiting to be able to take the sea route into Europe. Although the situation this year is considered extraordinary, partly due to the regional crisis in Syria, there is little indication that Europe will face easier times. In recent years, the International Organization for Migration (OIM) has advanced that the world will have 000 million new migrants by 405. That is twice as many as today, according to the organization. Among these, 2050 million people have to flee due to climate change, which is also considered a moderate estimate. Researchers and aid organizations in Ny Tid this week argue that Norway and Europe should think new in order to be able to adapt to a world characterized by increasing mobility across national borders. Fire extinguisher. An unwillingness to take on a new reality. This is how Anne-Marie Helland, Secretary General of Norwegian Church Aid, characterizes the European reaction to the refugee tragedy in the Mediterranean: "What we see now is firefighting, and it is not a good way to tackle the refugee problem," Helland told Ny Tid. She characterizes the Norwegian and European debate on refugees as naive. "I wonder if you really understand what the world actually looks like. We already have many climate refugees, and refugees from a region in crisis. In addition, a whole generation of young people in many countries are deprived of their hope for the future, and they know as well as us where there are opportunities. Then you can not continue to believe in Fortress Europe, "says Helland. "Fortress Europe", the asylum and border control regime in Europe, has been heavily criticized by the international human rights community after the tragic fatal accidents off the Libyan coast. Particularly criticized is the aforementioned Triton program, which replaced the exploration and aid program "Mare Nostrum" last autumn. Compared to its predecessor, Triton does not have a specific rescue mandate, and has far fewer powers than Mare Nostrum. On Monday 27 April, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, issued a joint statement stating that "measures to deter smuggling are useless if the EU is not prepared to discuss its overly strict migration policy ». The statement is a clear hint of the conflict over a pilot program to settle 5000 refugees. In total, it makes up less than five percent of the refugees to Europe so far in 2015. Nevertheless, according to the British The Guardian, this measure was the biggest controversy around at the summit. "The way it works today, countries like Italy get a disproportionate burden." – Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute PRIO, believes that there is a mismatch between what is being discussed and larger, structural problems. She believes there are several things the EU and the Schengen countries should now focus on. "Firstly, the Schengen countries can ensure a more even distribution of burdens between them. The way it works today, countries like Italy get a disproportionate burden. Secondly, the EU can expand the quotas for the number of refugees, which today do not meet the need. Thirdly, the opportunities for those who want to travel to Europe legally are in many cases equal to zero. By opening up more legal ways to travel to Europe, one could make the trip less dangerous for very many, "Jumbert told Ny Tid. Misses obligations. The quota system in particular has been under debate by several UN summits over the past week. In an interview with The Guardian, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, François Crépeau, proposes launching a global humanitarian plan to settle one million Syrians in Western countries, who make up a large proportion of those who defy fate across the Mediterranean, by 2020. " If we do not offer legal mechanisms, the Syrians will continue to resort to smugglers. It is the European awkwardness that creates a market for smugglers, "says Crépeau. Many European countries, including the United Kingdom, currently have no agreements with the UN on transfers of quota refugees, which makes asylum applications in the country itself the only option for residence. A similar obligation is equally absent when it comes to climate refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that as early as 2013, more than 20 million people in the world emigrated due to climate change. According to the report «Climate Refugees in Bangladesh», published by the RMMRU Research Center at the University of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh already receives 50 climate refugees each year. The center writes in the report that the city's capacity will soon be blown up, in a country that is expected to have to deal with between 000 and 20 million internally displaced people by 30. There is no overall plan to settle climate refugees, and the legislation in most western countries does difficult to seek asylum on the basis of climate change in the country of origin. A family from the island state of Kiribati who applied for asylum in New Zealand due to climate change in their home country, in 2050 their application for asylum was rejected. The reason was that this does not explicitly give the right to refugee status according to the UN Refugee Convention. The court in the capital Auckland ruled that one must be persecuted in order to obtain residence in the country. "It is not the task of this court to extend the refugee convention in such a way," the prosecutor in the case stated, according to NTB. We must go back to 2013 to find a proposal that concerns Norway's responsibility for climate refugees. Atle Sommerfeldt, then head of Norwegian Church Aid, demanded that Norway should take responsibility for 2009 climate refugees by 600. The background for the initiative was the calculation of the number of climate refugees this year, and the proportion Norway should take responsibility for, based on figures from Greenhouse Development Rights Framework. The index measures different countries' responsibilities for their CO000 emissions, adjusted economic capacity. "All the 2050 can not come here. But Norway's immigration and refugee policy must become more generous, so that it includes those fleeing climate change, "Sommerfeldt told Dagbladet at the time. Conflicting image. Sommerfeldt's successor in Norwegian Church Aid will not advance how many climate refugees Norway should receive, but she believes that Norwegian and European authorities must think completely differently in order to cope with future immigration. "We must accept that global migration will be increasingly important in the future. Then we must look up, and think bigger and more holistically about how we should adapt our societies to this reality. Today, people are shuffled back and forth across European borders, and that is unsustainable, "says Anne-Marie Helland. Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert also does not think it is possible to oppose this tendency in the future. "The problem is that everything that has to do with refugees and immigration is very politically inflamed, which among other things results in a kind of reluctance to increase the rescue capacity in the Mediterranean – simply for fear that it will encourage more to come. In the long run, I still think it will be difficult to maintain the strict border policy we have today, the refugee flows are simply too adaptable. " Jumbert hopes that the tragic current situation can lead to a change of attitude. "The policy pursued now is fundamentally at odds with the image of Europe as it wants to appear: a place where human rights and individual freedom are respected."
Østebø is a journalist at Ny Tid.
