EU migration agenda

Ahead of European interior ministers meeting in Brussels today to discuss progress on EU migration and asylum policy, Oxfam denounces plans to make EU countries commit to a “voluntary, simple and predictable solidarity mechanism”.

Unfair, incoherent and duplicit EU trade policies in North Africa have contributed to job losses, brain drains and overwhelmingly negative impacts on those who can least afford it, an Oxfam analysis released today has found.

As the two-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal nears on March 18, 2018, thousands of asylum seekers are trapped on the Aegean islands in deplorable conditions and without access to adequate protection and basic services, nine humans rights and humanitarian organisations including Oxfam said today.The Greek government should act immediately to end the containment policy that traps asylum seekers in these conditions on the islands and move them to safety on the mainland.

 

Many people are still trapped in captivity and suffering abuses in Libya a year after Italy struck an EU-backed deal with the government to stop irregular migrants. Migrants who have managed to escape Libya following the deal have told Oxfam and its partner Borderline Sicilia of on-going kidnapping, murder, rape and forced labor.

More than 13,500 refugees and other migrants remain trapped on the Greek islands in deplorable conditions as winter begins, a coalition of 13 NGOs including Oxfam said today. Oxfam calls on the Greek government and its EU partners to transfer immediately at least 5,500 asylum seekers from the squalid island camps to the Greek mainland.

As EU heads of state and government meet today in Brussels to discuss Europe’s response to migration, Oxfam says the EU must address the human rights abuses suffered by refugees and migrants within and at Europe’s borders, instead of obsessively focusing on stopping people arriving.