Migration and isolation: “The refugee system crisis is being veiled”

Whether Poland, Greece or the USA: All over the world, states are increasingly sealing themselves off at their borders. Migration expert Knaus speaks of a massive crisis in the refugee convention – and shows a way to rescue it.

tagesschau.de: It is becoming increasingly difficult for refugees and irregular migrants to cross borders. The debate in Germany, but also internationally, is determined by the opposite perception, according to which one is facing a wave of refugees – the reaction to the change in power in Afghanistan in the summer is an example. How do you explain this discrepancy?

Gerald Knaus: The distorted perception begins with our language. Many speak of flight and irregular migration as if it were a scientific phenomenon, waves, floods, currents, push and pull factors. And some suggest that this phenomenon, the growing “pressure”, cannot be stopped and will continue to grow. In reality, however, people trying to cross irregular borders fail when they encounter a determined state that is determined to use force.

When borders are closed by force, when fences are guarded by soldiers and boats are pushed back, irregular migration comes to a halt almost everywhere. More and more states are starting to disregard the Refugee Convention and stop irregular migration with violence. The result: the number of people seeking protection who successfully overcome borders is at an all-time low.

The effect of communication and language

tagesschau.de: And yet the perception is different in many European countries – namely that of the threat. Is that also a question of communication?

Knaus: It’s an unfortunate communication. Every year international organizations announce new record numbers of how many people are on the run worldwide, without explaining that since 2017 hardly any refugees have successfully crossed borders: since 2017, a few hundreds of thousands worldwide. This obscures the crisis in which the global refugee system finds itself.

Today, the core of the Refugee Convention, the requirement not to put people back into danger without examination, is also being systematically broken by democracies – in the United States under ex-US President Donald Trump and even more so under Joe Biden, but also in the European Union from Greece to Poland.

tagesschau.de: At the same time, a new term comes into play, that of the hybrid threat.

Knaus: Behind this is the concept of migrants as a weapon in the hands of an attacker. The US scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has established that this form of blackmail is always successful when it comes across countries with laws that prohibit them from reacting to such migration movements with violence. She speaks of “hypocritical costs”. In this logic, the easiest way to avoid being blackmailed is to give up these values ​​in order not to have to pretend anymore.

In 2015, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke of irregular migration as a threat to national security. Today the EU is doing this in view of the few thousand people on its eastern border. And when it comes to national security, options for action become conceivable that have been excluded in the right of asylum – to push people back without examining their need for protection. This is prohibited in current EU and asylum law. But today it is legitimized as an answer to a “hybrid attack”.

How the Refugee Convention can be saved

tagesschau.de: What has to happen in order to come to a different approach to the refugee movements and irregular migration?

Knaus: If fewer and fewer refugees cross borders irregularly around the world – for example from Afghanistan or Syria, to the USA or the EU – the question arises whether there are more legal ways to do this. And the sad answer to that is: No, these are also going down. By the end of November this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had relocated fewer than 30,000 refugees worldwide. Canada and Sweden stand out. Canada took in 30,000 refugees through resettlement in 2019, Sweden 5,000 every year. If Germany did that to the same extent, it would be 41,500 refugees per year. If France and the Benelux countries were to join, there would be 100,000 refugees per year in the northern countries, who would receive protection in the EU through resettlement without being smuggled and without danger to their lives. That would be many more refugees than have come irregularly into the EU via the Mediterranean since 2017.

tagesschau.de: In view of this development, can the refugee convention be saved at all?

Resettlement could be expanded into a cornerstone of international refugee protection with political commitment. And when it comes to borders, you have to invest in cooperation with third countries. If you rightly refuse that people are pushed back into unworthy situations – to Libya or Belarus – but still want to reduce irregular migration and death in the Mediterranean, this is only possible through partnerships in which third countries take back few people from agreed deadlines, but none Need protection or can get it elsewhere. To do this, you have to offer these partners something that is in the interests of both parties. With these two pillars, the Refugee Convention and human dignity could be saved – worldwide. But you have to take it seriously. This has not happened in Germany or Europe in recent years.

What the example of Turkey teaches

tagesschau.de: Is the refugee agreement with Turkey a suitable or a deterrent example of cooperation with third countries?

Knaus: In 2016, Turkey offered the EU to take back irregular arrivals from a deadline, even though the country had already taken in many more refugees than the entire EU. The condition was that the EU help to provide for the millions of people and take in more refugees in an orderly manner through resettlement. In addition, the Turkish population should be given the prospect of visa-free travel to the EU. After that, the number of people killed in the Aegean fell by 1,000 a year, with far fewer people getting on boats. The situation of the Syrians in Turkey was also improved with EU money.

But in 2020 this cooperation collapsed. Turkey is not taking anyone back from Greece today, the Greek authorities have been using push-backs since March 2020. It would be in the interests of the refugees in Turkey, in the interests of the rule of law and the protection of refugees, to achieve a functioning agreement again. The alternative to such agreements is not open borders, but the systematic suspension of valid laws and conventions, as we are experiencing today.

tagesschau.de: Are the traffic lights on the right track with what they set out to do in the coalition agreement on the migration issue?

Knaus: She has chosen an important and demanding approach and is therefore faced with an enormous challenge in terms of implementation. The coalition agreement wants less irregular migration to the EU, an end to the push-backs at the EU’s external borders, the preservation of the human rights and refugee convention and more legal channels. But all of this only works together – and this is also what the coalition agreement says – if agreements are reached with third countries. A special representative should be appointed for this purpose.

If this succeeds in cooperation with other European countries, it would be a breakthrough. If it does not succeed, however, it is to be feared that in four years’ time the violence at the EU’s external borders, which we are already experiencing today, will be perceived as having no alternative. That would be a tragedy for global refugee protection and for the traffic lights.

The interview was conducted by Eckart Aretz, tagesschau.de