2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 14 of which sets out the right to seek asylum:
“Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
For the last 20 years, the numbers of people claiming asylum in Europe has been declining. This decline has not been accompanied by comparable falls in global conflicts and human rights abuses. The Refugee Council became interested in the UK and Europe’s interception activities and, in particular in examining whether the UK’s border controls operating outside UK territory were denying refugees access to the UK. In 2007, we launched a one year research project which has resulted in the publication of the report, ‘Remote Controls: how UK border controls are endangering the lives of refugees’.
The study is timely given the UK’s increasing efforts to strengthen its borders by conducting immigration control abroad. It builds on previous efforts by the Refugee Council to highlight the impact of border control on access to asylum for refugees. For example, in 2006, the Refugee Council and the European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) submitted evidence to a House of Lords Inquiry into Frontex, the European Agency responsible for operational co ordination for border management of the external borders of the EU. We believe that Frontex fails to demonstrate adequate consideration of international and European asylum and human rights law including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and European Community (EC law) in respect of access to asylum and the prohibition of refoulement.
Similarly, the Refugee Council’s ‘Remote Controls’ report outlines the need for the UK to put systems in place, wherever it operates, to ensure that the principle of non-refoulement is respected and that refugees are able to access protection.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, a Turkish NGO, contributed the foreward to the ‘Remote Controls’ report and sets the scene from the point of view of a country where many refugees transit on their way to the UK:
“Europe’s failure to allow access to protection for refugees has consequences. At a minimum, Europe sets a ‘bad example’, particularly for States in Europe’s immediate neighbourhood. The fear of becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for migrants and refugees motivates governments like Turkey to adopt similar indiscriminate migration control measures aimed at keeping the ‘mixed flows’ of migrants and refugees at bay, and removing those who did manage to arrive back to countries of transit and origin further to the east and south. At worst, Europe proactively sets transit countries like Turkey up as ‘partners in crime’, as gatekeepers of Fortress Europe expected to intercept and return irregular migrants and potential asylum seekers at whatever cost.”
