Plans by the European Union (EU) to tighten asylum procedures by sending people back to so-called ”safe countries” came under fire yesterday from the United Nations (UN) and human rights groups.
Ruud Lubbers, the UN high commissioner for refugees, warned that governments were in danger of breaking international law if they adopted controversial new rules.
Drafts of laws defining who can apply for asylum and how to deal with applications fall short of standards set out in the UN’s 1951 Geneva convention on refugees, he said.
”Europe should be proud of its tradition of giving asylum and of saving lives,” said Mr Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister. ”It would be a real pity if Europe were to undermine the great tradition of protecting real refugees.”
EU interior ministers are due to discuss the proposed laws at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, in the hope that the legislation will be able to come into force by May 1, when 10 more countries join the club.
At present there is no harmonisation of national laws — leading to so-called asylum shopping. But the issue has soared up the political agenda across the continent after electoral victories for populist and far-right anti-immigration parties.
The criticism by Mr Lubbers follows a speech by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, to the European parliament earlier this year, in which he urged a more compassionate and less repressive approach to immigrants, who he said had been ”stigmatised, vilified, even dehumanised”.
Amnesty International echoed the UN concerns about provisions allowing asylum seekers to be deported to what EU governments consider ”safe third countries”, rather than countries they fled.
”We have no option but to call on the EU to scrap this proposal, which has been shaped in reaction to populist pressures and fears whipped up about a non-existent flood of refugees,” said an Amnesty executive officer, Daphne Bouteillet-Pa quet.
Amnesty International, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Human Rights Watch and seven other groups said the EU would be better off with no rules than adopting joint standards lower than international law.
The United Nations High Council for Refugees (UNHCR) warned that criteria for determining the safety of a third country were ”minimalist”, and could lead to asylum seekers being sent back to states that do not maintain basic human rights standards, and where there is no guarantee that their cases would be examined fairly.
”This could amount to an effective denial of the right to seek asylum under international law,” the Geneva-based agency said. It said most rejected asylum seekers who lodge appeals would not be allowed to stay in the EU until the appeals were decided, despite the fact that in several countries between 30% and 60% of negative decisions were overturned on appeal.
The rules could also mean asylum seekers might eventually be deported from the ”safe” country back to their homelands, where they face persecution, Mr Lubbers said.
Britain wants other EU countries to join it in asserting the right to send people out of the country during an appeal. Ireland, which holds the union’s rotating presidency, says the negotiations, which have been going on for six years, have been difficult. — Guardian Unlimited Â