European leaders and heads of state are willfully ignoring the plight of refugees and migrants suffering at the border between Croatia and Bosnia to avoid the domestic political fallout that undertaking real migration reform would cause.
COPENHAGHEN – In the aftermath of the 2014 European migration crisis in which thousands of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea — and continue to do so attempting to reach safer shores — the European Union devised now-infamous accords with states such as Turkey and Libya to halt the flow of migration at its borders. In the seven years following their enactment, subsequent rulings of the European Court of Human Rights warned European policymakers about the inherent implications of such agreements, waves of public criticism have lambasted their use, and human rights organizations have spoken out in opposition to the practice of closing borders for political expediency. Today, their pleas continue to fall on deaf ears; the EU appears to have learned nothing from the experience, except how to better repeat it.
The ongoing crisis at the Bosnian-Croatian border is yet another chip in the EU’s pillar of human rights, and brings further doubt upon the claim that the protection and safeguarding of human rights is among the EU's top priorities, if ever that was the case. Bosnia and Herzegovina is part of the well-known Balkan transit route for thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing war, poverty, and persecution in the Middle East and North Africa. The precarious situation of these migrants was already a complicated entanglement of perilous journeying, forced refoulements, and trampled human rights. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the subsequent unilateral self-isolation of the European Union, and the suspension of free movement through the Schengen Area by a majority of member states, the prospects for the safety and wellbeing of refugees and migrants grew even dimmer.
According to the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, since the beginning of 2018, around 70,000 asylum seekers and migrants arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Western Balkan route. The United Nations reports that around 8,000 refugees and migrants remain in the country, unable to progress further.
In this context, a nightmare humanitarian crisis became a reality, as nearly 2,000 people remain without adequate shelter — most sleeping outside in freezing temperatures throughout winter, now through the rain and storms of spring, and soon, if nothing is done to protect them, through the unbridled heat of summer. Public outcries to save the migrants from the lethal temperatures in winter were once again met with little more than weightless statements and crocodile tears from European Heads of State and policymakers.
Yet the crisis has far from passed. The humanitarian crisis at the border with Bosnia & Herzegovina grows more dire by the day as hundreds more people — most of them from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh — embark on a desperate journey to the EU to seek refuge from civil war, violence, and poverty, and are forced to stop at the border Croatia.
Worse, as the NGO Save The Children reported, among them are found hundreds of unaccompanied minors and children, their families trapped in the squalor of overcrowded makeshift camps along the Balkan route, where they and their families are vulnerable and subject to smuggling, theft, human trafficking, and arrest by border authorities.
"Refugees and migrants trapped along the Balkans migration route, including some 500 unaccompanied children and 400 children with family who are currently in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are facing increased risks from smugglers, traffickers and border authorities" (Save the Children press release, February 19).
The overcrowded conditions of the camps they are forced into come with more than the threat of kidnapping, theft, or arrest. On December 23, 2020, a violent fire destroyed the Lipa refugee camp in Bosnia, provoking its closure. The only camp that provided shelter for the thousands of people rejected by Croatia, Slovenia and Italy represented the straw that broke the camel's back.
The camp, originally supervised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) but abandoned just before the fire’s outbreak, had already been criticized several times for its inhumane conditions which failed to meet even minimum humanitarian standards. Unsanitary living conditions in tight quarters provoked an outbreak of disease among refugees. The absence of heating left many freezing as average daily temperatures dropped below 0℃ (32℉). With the camp’s closure in December, thousands of migrants were left without shelter or protection from the elements, forced to sleep in abandoned trains, buildings or makeshift tents without access to potable water, electricity, or heating. Without even the inadequate sanitation facilities or resources of the camp, the people's exposure to seasonal illnesses and COVID-19 increased dramatically.
Were this not enough, credible reports from several international organizations, associations, and volunteers reveal that Croatian authorities engaged in episodes of violence and inhuman treatment against refugees on the border with Bosnia. In recent reporting for the Italian journal “La Stampa”, Niccolò Zancan claims that those who try to cross the border are “tortured, mocked, photographed like a trophy, beaten, branded.” To teach them “a lesson” — as Zancan witnessed — many migrants are stripped of their shoes and sent back along the long forest that separates Croatia and Bosnia. As a result, Zancan reports, several migrants develop necrosis (the death of whole parts of the body) from frostbite — sometimes their injuries are so grave that phalanges come off their feet.
As Croatia is a proud member state of the EU — an organization that espouses a respect and dedication to the protection of human rights — an obvious question springs to mind: what is the EU doing?
Despite the cacophonous plea for help echoed by a throng of humanitarian organizations, the answer is too little, too late.
So far, the EU has publicly urged the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina to find appropriate accommodation for the migrants, but exercised little diplomatic or political muscle to see it done. Brussels also sent technical experts to assess the humanitarian needs on the ground — a worthwhile mission to gather and analyze data, but only if the findings are put to use. Ultimately, the EU can send as many technicians and evaluate the exact measure of desperation as much as it wants, but absent strong political action at the highest national and international levels, the gestures are empty and the analysis an exercise in hypocrisy.
As obvious to policymakers and leaders as it is to a common citizen, any solution to a crisis of this magnitude — now ongoing for five years — can only be political. There is no challenge of a technical nature standing between the crisis and providing these people food, water, heating, and shelter, at the bare minimum. If not for the genuine desire to protect human rights and look to the humanitarian needs of those literally upon its border, then for its reputation and credibility, the EU must stop making excuses and do its part – in deed, not just in song.
Yet the EU continues to play politics. On the contrary, the strategy so far adopted by the EU is to place all blame squarely on the shoulders of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national leaders and local authorities for all inaction, as though the EU itself had not the capacity, purview, or responsibility to address the crisis. EU Commission for Foreign Policy Spokesperson Peter Stano went so far as to warn that, “if Bosnia-Herzegovina is unable to meet the EU's demands and its international obligations to resolve the current humanitarian crisis, there will be consequences also as regards the country's aspiration to join the EU.” Statements such as these carry little if no effect except to carry out a feeble attempt to avoid blame and to attempt to clear the European conscience with muddy water.
If on one hand it is true that the Bosnian central government bears the sole responsibility to manage the crisis, then on the other, it is all the more empty a statement for Brussels to make, as Sarajevo’s hands are tied. As of today, regardless of any decisions made by the central government, most cantons in Bosnia have free rein to refuse to accept migrants other than those already present. According to the IOM’s Crisis Response Plan for 2021 in Bosnia and Herzegovina “there is a deterioration of social cohesion in these communities and a potential for the deterioration of relations between host and migrant communities.” The principle cause, according to the IOM, is that “host communities of migrant and refugee reception centers have been increasingly falling prey to xenophobic narratives, fueled by a lack of sense of control over political and migration management decisions in their communities and socio-economic issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic”.
The EU, of course, knows this story very well. Yet, it offers nothing to change the course of action and ease the suffering of thousands of people. Thousands for whom the relocation to reception centers across the 27 EU member states through a fair quota system would offer them vastly improved living standards and opportunities than by forcing them into one location. For the deep pockets of an economic giant the size of the EU, relocating a few thousand people would cost next to nothing and make no measurable statistical impact — demographic, economic, or otherwise — the host countries. Indeed, IOM estimates that in total there are only between 9,000 to 10,000 migrants in Bosnia at the present time. Compared to the almost 500 million citizens living in the EU, the group would represent 0.002 percent of its population, or one migrant per 50,000 people.
While the real consequences of their relocations would be negligible, their political implications would be massive. In a time of pandemics, economic crises, and rising inequality and suffering across even wealthy countries, migration has become the favored scapegoat of politicians across much of the political spectrum in Europe to rally the people in order to hold onto power — or seize it outright. It is often much easier to point the finger at an often unseen, poorly understood, and often unknown foreign “enemy” to motivate people through fear than to undertake the challenge of addressing the complex challenges arrayed against policymakers and leaders — all to the detriment of society and the suffering of the innocent. It is, albeit, old hat. Modern-day Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet put it best, stating that, “when the poor are convinced that their problems depend on who is worse off than them, we are faced with the masterpiece of the ruling classes.”
This helps explaining why, so far, all the attempts by the EU to adopt a working migration burden-sharing structure — a concept which finds its legitimacy in article 78.3 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union — have failed. The epitome of this failure, the EU Decision 2015/1523 of September 2015 provided for the relocation of 160,000 migrants then present in Italy and Greece equally between all EU countries through a quota scheme. In 2017, when the deadline given to EU members to implement the Decision expired, the results delivered were embarrassing. Of the 160,000 refugees that member states were tasked with redistributing in the Decision, only 28,000 were relocated.
Although the relocation decisions were legally binding, and therefore carrying the potential for an array of sanctions to be levied against those in non-compliance, some Member States unilaterally failed to comply with them or refused outright. This stands as a measure of the sway that the fear of domestic political backlash and of losing electoral support holds over European leaders in matters concerning migration.
This nuance also sheds light on the fact that the EU — too often credited as a singular and independent political unit — too often proves itself a giant with clay feet. This is especially true when it comes to deal with issues like Migration Law where the EU does not hold exclusive legal competence. While in areas of competency such as trade policy the EU is a unitary actor, in terms of migration, the EU has no more real power to act than a standard International Organization which depends entirely upon perpetually reaffirmed domestic political will to act, yet is also subject to the veto power of any one member state.
It comes as little surprise then, that after a recent visit from a delegation of the European Parliament to the border between Croatia and Bosnia intended to monitor the living conditions of migrants at the refugee camps in Bihac, the Croatian government responded unkindly. In a scathing statement released by the Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic, the Minister lambasted the delegation's visit as, "nothing other than the umpteenth provocation against Croatian police" and "an attempt to discredit the reputation of the country.”
The reality is that, for all it has achieved towards economic unity, the EU is just as internally divided as ever before where domestic politics meets collective policymaking. The only possible long-term solution to cyclical migrations crises lies with reform of the Dublin System, a now thoroughly outdated regulation that established the criteria and mechanisms for determining which EU Member State is responsible for examining asylum applications.
The crux of its inadequacy to address the challenges set before the EU rests with the stipulation that the responsibility for examining an asylum claim (and thus to host applicants) lies first and foremost with the Member State which played the greatest part in the applicant’s entry to the EU. In all but a few cases this means that it is the sole legal responsibility of the country of first arrival to address asylum claims and provide for their needs before and after the case is adjudicated. This is the primary reason why countries such as Croatia are politically motivated to deny migrants, even though most migrants have no intention to remain in their country of first arrival, but rather choose to or are forced to arrive there first upon entering the EU.
The Dublin System worked well for the time in which it was created. In the 1990s, migration to Europe was a very different phenomenon, met mostly by individual asylum seekers and small numbers of refugees which border states were easily equipped to handle. In the present day, its inadequate preparation for challenges of this scale have sown the seeds of injustices, there for all to see but which few wish to remedy for fear of political backlash.
As a result, the responsibility for most asylum claims is placed on a small number of coastal member states — a situation which has often overwhelmed the capacity of these countries of first arrival. Aware of this failing, over the years the European Commission has repeatedly stressed the need for a new system and presented proposals to reform migration policy in that direction. Although many of these attempts win widely favorable vote of the European Parliament, they repeatedly end in a stalemate between the EU and its own member states’ leaders who refuse to act, lest they lose support from their electorate.
Without unanimous political support at the highest levels of all member states, there is little to no room for reform. Within the current political atmosphere across European member states, prevailing winds blow in favor of member states prioritizing short-term national and political interests over a communitarian approach to the long-term detriment of each. Moreover, repeated failures to remedy its policy and live up to its lofty and worthwhile goals to support and safeguard human rights undermine the EU's credibility and slanders both its reputation as well as that of its member states in the process.
Nevertheless, the EU cannot afford to relegate itself to sitting on the side-lines, nor are stale periodic rebukes by European spokespeople or dead-on-arrival parliamentary proposals sufficient. As Amnesty International articulated in a recent press release, the responsibility of the EU is clear and known to itself. By shutting down its borders, it made a conscious decision to abandon thousands of people in neighboring countries, like Bosnia, because it believes itself politically incapable of accommodating them at present.
In a darker view, European immobilism might be taken not as an inability to to take action, but rather an inhuman and intentional strategy to create a deadly bottleneck at Europe’s gateway in order to discourage migrants to undertake the journey along the Balkan route in the first place. If the existence of an intentionally designed reverse pull-factor strategy were verified, the European Union and its members states would be guilty of sacrificing the lives and hopes of thousands of women, men and children for political motivation.
What is lacking in 2021 is not so much collective capacity or funding to address the migration crisis, but rather political courage and leadership. Many issues remain clouded behind the mist of uncertainty, but one thing stands clear: it is unacceptable to allow people to whom the EU has both the moral and self-declared duty to protect to die in the cold right on Europe’s door and on its watch. A fortiori considering that, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants, the only fault of these people is in their desire to seek and contribute to a better future in Europe.
If Europe does not wish to be denounced as guilty of serious violations of human rights — intentionally inflicted or not — it must find the political courage to amend itself and reopen humanitarian corridors to ease the suffering of these people. Too much time has already been wasted to protect too little worth keeping at the expense of considerable human life and European credibility.
Whether or not the EU is intentionally creating a deadly bottleneck for refugees and migrants on its border on purpose, the result is the same. The EU and its member states must immediately remedy their approach to care for these people or else bear the guilt of the tragedy and responsibility for the loss of life all the same.
Edited by: Cameron Vaské (contributing)
All views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not represent the views of The International Scholar or any other organization.
Banner photo licensed for editorial use via DepositPhotos:
Refugiados en Serbia durante el invierno, by nemar74, DepositPhotos,
https://sp.depositphotos.com/139467780/stock-photo-refugees-in-serbia-during-the.html