Wow. What a week this was for the crisis of the Mediterranean boat people.
I’m not sure I can recall an issue accelerating so quickly, with such a rapid high-level outcome. The last time I sat at this blog, a week ago, I mused that maybe, just maybe, the debate was reaching a tipping point.
Seven days later, it feels like we’ve talked about nothing else for months.
An emergency EU summit tripled its search and rescue operations budget, a growing list of states are promising to send ships and additional resources, and there is talk of an intervention in Libya. Marking its coming of age, the affair even earned itself a front cover in The Economist.
This was a “something must be done” moment. Europe’s leaders could not accept that so many people have been dying, trying to reach their shores. And even the United Nations had urged the EU to “go beyond its present minimalist approach.” But will it be enough?
Will it? Well, of course not. The EU has just about reinstated the levels of Mare Nostrum, the rescue operation ill-advisedly abandoned last year.
It was struggling to cope with demand even then, and the numbers have since grown much higher.
Fundamental questions about the way we treat economic migrants, the resettlement of refugees, efforts to offer more opportunity in the countries the migrants come from, and the imperative to stem conflict in Africa and the Middle East all remain unanswered.
Nonetheless, it does feel like something profound has changed.
A topic politicians were running scared of a mere fortnight ago (only the Greens dared raise it during the UK election TV debate) is now being discussed 24/7.
Media that had relegated the crisis to second tier are now leading on it. Big questions about who we are and how we act when faced with the largest forced displacement crisis since World War 2 are on the table. This one is going to run and run. So what happened?
First, obviously, there were two major disasters. The drowning early last week of 400 migrants as they fled to Europe from Libya set off alarm bells. And then, over the weekend, a tragedy twice as horrific: killing as many as 850 people in the worst refugee shipwreck on the Mediterranean yet recorded.
This triggered several campaigns that had been bubbling away for months. The steady drip of advocacy by IOM, UNHCR, OHCHR, Amnesty and many others meant there was a solid bedrock of information, analysis and advocacy to build from.
And then, with impeccable execution, Save the Children launched its #restarttherescue campaign, which went gangbusters.
But even this might have not been enough, until the full horror of our political indolence was caricatured in one of the most jaw-dropping political columns of our times, a new low that genuinely shocked a nation.
Enter Katie Hopkins, the bogeywoman, Britain’s very own Ann Coulter, a pantomime villain who has risen to infamy through virulent opinionating. Even by her callous self-publicising standards she plundered a new low, advocating in a mainstream British newspaper that we turn the gunboats on migrants, and describing them as cockroaches and feral humans.
I scoured the web for more information. Was she some kind of secret Swift, penning A Modest Proposal for our times? Her words were so appalling, so reminiscent of the language of Rwanda’s genocide, that close to 300,000 people signed a petition on Change.org calling for her removal.
Not that The Sun seemed to care. Nor the London radio station, LBC, which gave her a 2 hour platform to air her vile views shortly after. (And earning its very own angry twitterstorm as a result.)
Unlike the drownings that preceded it, the vitriol expressed by this media monstrosity galvanised a frenzied flurry of high profile excoriations, including a full frontal from the country’s favorite celebrity rebel Russel Brand, who delightfully described her as “the pus emerging from the pimple of our policy.”
Even Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN Human Rights chief, weighed in.
This type of language is clearly inflammatory and unacceptable, especially in a national newspaper. The Sun’s editors took an editorial decision to publish this article, and – if it is found in breach of the law – should be held responsible along with the author.
One thing was clear. The country had woken up. Letting people drown in terror and laughing about it was simply not on, and it was time to do something about it.
Campaigns bloomed, iconic images multiplied. In Brighton, Britain’s progressive pagoda of seaside protest, dozens of campaigners lay in body bags on the beach.
Social media was buzzing, the chat shows on fire. People changed their facebook profiles to images of hands emerging from the sea.
In short, the crisis of the Mediterranean boat people finally broke through.
So where next?
First, the momentum for more search and rescue at sea needs to be kept up. In a triage approach to human suffering, this surely has to be the priority.
Our body politic cannot allow a tradition as ancient and fundamental as maritime rescue to fall by the wayside. If the threefold increase in funding makes the difference, great, but if it falls short, as many fear, more pressure will be necessary.
Then we must embark on the really difficult questions. How radically do we need to change our approach to migration to keep pace with this crisis?
Millions of north Africans, sub-Saharan Africans and Turks came to Europe between 1950 and 1975 and no one died and there was no smuggling. Why? Because they took the ferry … for 50 francs and they disembarked in Marseille, took the train to Germany or Belgium or wherever else.
Everyone was recorded, everyone was controlled, but they could come. And if they came with a tourist visa and they found a job, they could easily transform the tourist visa into a work permit. And when they lost their job, which happened, they could go home with ease of mind because they knew they could come back. Mobility was the name of the game.
Maybe, as he suggests, the answer is not more control, but less: flexibility that releases pressure, keeps people alive, offers hope, and boosts European competitiveness in the process.
Similarly, some people are beginning to ask: does our concept of refugees still make sense? Are our definitions too strict? Is it right to differentiate those fleeing economic hardship and refugees from war; does all the paperwork and waiting do more harm than good?
I am no expert here, but I suspect there is still a strong case for distinction. The political reality is that Europe will not be opening its doors any time soon. There will be some form of quota, and there will be competition for places. If we treat all migrants the same, do we not risk sending thousands back to their deaths?
Granting asylum from conflict goes back to the very dawn of nations; and we should not dispense of it lightly. In a BBC piece a decade ago, Ruud Lubbers, a former High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote:
The practice of granting asylum to people fleeing persecution in foreign lands is one of the earliest hallmarks of civilisation. References to it have been found in texts written 3,500 years ago, during the blossoming of the great early civilisations in the Middle East. The Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians and ancient Egyptians all recognised the need to protect refugees.
What would be the consequences of abandoning this concept? Severe, I suspect.
Yet, if we do wish to keep it alive, we must acknowledge the system we have in place is no longer adequate.
Alexander Betts, from the University of Oxford, this week issued a clear and eloquent warning to the New York Times.
The Syrian crisis places the entire humanitarian system at a crossroads. It requires us to radically rethink how we protect and assist such large numbers of displaced people.
This is no small question, and will demand considerable attention over the coming months. It will be caught up in wider questions about economic growth, security and international development.
But for the moment, at least, the conversation has finally begun. And for that, we can allow ourselves a small degree of satisfaction.
aidinsider 