The EU's failed asylum rules

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/20/opinion/edfrelick.php

The EU's failed asylum rules
By Bill Frelick
Thursday, November 20, 2008
ATHENS:

It's easy to see why Iraqis overwhelmingly sought asylum in Sweden last year. The country had granted 91 percent of their asylum requests the year before. But why would the next-largest number apply in Greece, which had a zero approval rate for Iraqis? And why did relatively few Iraqis, the largest group of asylum seekers in the European Union, seek asylum in Britain, with troops on the ground in Iraq - or Germany, with Europe's largest population and strongest economy, or other EU countries?

EU asylum rules provide the answer: Many Iraqis lodged their asylum claims in Greece because they had no other choice. Because of its location, Greece is the most favorable entry point to the EU for Iraqis. And the EU system, known as Dublin II, dictates that claims are generally assessed in the first EU state a person enters.

An Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk told me of his predicament: "I wanted to go to another country to seek asylum, but a friend told me that because they took my fingerprints, they would send me back to Athens. I have now been here a month without papers. Now I am in a hole. I can't go out. I can't stay. Every day I think I made a mistake to leave my country. I want to go back, but how can I? I would be killed if I go back. But they treat you like a dog here. I have nothing. No rights. No friends."

The Dublin system fails to consider the legitimate interest asylum seekers have in choosing where to apply and unfairly allocates the burden of processing claims to the states on the EU's external frontiers.

Left nearly alone to bear the Iraqi refugee burden in Europe, both Sweden and Greece have reacted in ways that are as unfortunate as they are predictable. Sweden has become much less generous in offering asylum. By the first trimester of 2008, it was granting only 25 percent of requests. The result? The number of Iraqi asylum applicants in Sweden fell by half in the first half of 2008.

Greece has taken the approach, documented in a Human Rights Watch report to be released next week, of systematically rounding up and detaining migrants in dirty, overcrowded conditions in the border region with Turkey and forcibly and secretly expelling them to Turkey. Coast Guard officials push migrants from Greek territorial waters, sometimes puncturing inflatable boats or otherwise disabling their vessels. For those managing to gain a foothold in Greece, the authorities block access to asylum procedures and deny nearly all asylum claims.

A 34-year-old Iraqi Turkmen from Kerkuk who said that he made 10 attempts to cross into Greece before succeeding provides a typical example among the scores of interviews collected by Human Rights Watch: "One time I crossed the river into Greece and arrived in Komotini. They put us in jail for five days and then took us to the river and pushed us back. We were 60 persons. They put us in a small river boat with a motor in groups of 10. They did it in the middle of the night. It was raining hard and the Greek police started beating us to make us move more quickly. I saw one man who tried to refuse to go on the boat, and they beat him and threw him in the river. They beat us with police clubs to get us to go on the boat."

The Turkish border authorities likewise abuse migrants, detaining those pushed back by Greece in degrading conditions. These migrants have no real opportunity to seek asylum in Turkey and are often detained indefinitely. Turkey continues to return Iraqis to Iraq without giving them a genuine chance to seek protection.

As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has urged, EU states should suspend transfers of asylum seekers back to Greece and examine their claims themselves. They should resume such transfers only when Greece meets EU standards on detention, police conduct and asylum access, and when Greece stops forcibly returning people who would face inhuman and degrading treatment in Turkey or persecution in their countries of origin.

A more equitable and better-managed approach by the EU would reduce the burden on Sweden and Greece and better protect Iraqi refugees. But the EU's failures in equitable burden-sharing do not relieve Greece of its responsibility to treat people humanely and its obligation not to return refugees and asylum seekers to a risk of degrading treatment, persecution, or worse.

Bill Frelick is the refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch and author of "Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greek/Turkey Entrance to the European Union."

Initative irakienne internationale pour les réfugiés irakiens - Signez la pétition

Une part des revenus pétroliers irakiens

Plus de 4,5 millions d’Irakiens — un cinquième de la population — ont été déplacés à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de leur pays, en raison des politiques sectaires menées par l’occupation et les gouvernements qu’elle a installés depuis l’invasion illégale de l’Iraq en 2003

La communauté internationale, les forces d’occupation et le gouvernement en Irak, sont légalement tenus de soutenir et de protéger les réfugiés irakiens

Les réfugiés irakiens sont des citoyens irakiens. Ils ont les pleins droits de vivre dans la dignité, de bénéficier équitablement des ressources nationales, ainsi que de rentrer dans leurs foyers

Le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, en tant que plus haut organe des Nations Unies, a le pouvoir et l’obligation légale, d’assurer les besoins des réfugiés irakiens, en adoptant une résolution qui exige de l’Etat irakien de répartir proportionnellement les revenus nationaux aux agences responsables et aux pays d’accueil

L’humanité est en détresse en Iraq. Notre responsabilité morale est de la sauvegarder. Rejoignez-nous.

Initiative Irakienne Internationale pour les réfugiés irakiens

1153 signatures à ce jour

Pour signer la pétition, prière de cliquer sur le lien ci-dessous :

http://3iii.org/proposal/une-part-des-revenus-petroliers-irakiens

Iraqi International Initiative on Refugees

Hereunder is a message from Hana Al-Bayati:

Thank you for endorsing the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees

Dear endorsers,

Thank you. You are now more than 1000 influential personalities who support our initiative. We hope many of you will remain mobilized and help us, with your critical analysis, ideas, skills, expertise and contacts, in developing this proposal through all relevant channels; international organizations, non - governmental associations, professional unions, as well as in the media.

Our ambition is to be present everywhere we can make the proposal adopted. Therefore, please inform us of future meetings or existing publications where we could be present or provide material.

We hope those who have access to the media can inform us, so we start constituting a team of dedicated journalists who could develop the proposal from that angle. If you have translation capabilities, tell us, if you are willing to become a member of our translators team, for future materials. Also, in order to sustain this initiative and its website, we will need to raise some funds; advice, contacts and ideas for donations are very welcome.

We hope you can link http://www.3iii.org onto your website, and engage your sites and blogs as sister sites to ours.

Please send us all news and documents of activities you are — or plan to be — organizing around this proposal, or the issue of refugees, or that serve the Iraqi cause, so we can publish on our website and distribute in our newsletter.

Speeches and resolutions in meetings, final declarations, articles, reports, videos etc...
(see pasted below, material from our 1st signatories)

We want to thank all individual signatories, and all websites and people who published and distributed this call. We hope that we continue this effort together until Iraqi Oil Revenues for Iraqi Refugees is no more a campaign but is realized.

Special thanks to Dr Ian Douglas, author of 'US genocide in Iraq' for editing the original english version of the proposal.

Special thanks to all voluntary translators of this call.

Special thanks to our sister site, the BRusselsTribunal
http://www.brusselstribunal.org

Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our moral obligation is to save it

Hana Albayaty - coordinator
hanaalbayaty@3iii.org

The Iraqi International Initiative on refugees

Iraqi Oil Revenues for Iraqi Refugees - UPDATE

IMPORTANT

Iraqi International Initiative on refugees http://3iii.org/
Iraqi oil revenues for Iraqi refugees, update

Dear endorsers,

Whether your reasons for endorsing our initiative "Iraqi oil revenues for Iraqi refugees" are humanitarian, political, legal or even personal, it proves that you understood well our proposal as the solution to end the suffering of Iraqi refugees and displaced. You give us hope and courage. Thanks to your support we are now conscious that this just and necessary initiative has an important potential, which if well coordinated can serve the cause of the Iraqi people.

Our proposal is concrete, unitary and impersonal. As the signatories show, it is supported by all currents among Iraqi refugees. Until there are official representative councils of refugees in each country, we should try to be present wherever the issue of Iraqi refugees is discussed or decisions concerning their plight taken, in order to present our comprehensive proposal and get it adopted there. To achieve this, we need the help and the influence of each of you.

Hana Al Bayaty drafted an article "Oil for Iraqi citizens", which develops further the concepts and angles of argument at the core of the initiative. We hope it will help all in articulating the defense of the proposal:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/879/focus.htm

4/5th of the Iraqi displaced population are women and children, themselves victims and families of the victims of the crimes committed by the occupation and its allies. Dr Souad N. Al Azzawi carried out a scientific study on the living conditions of Iraqi women under occupation. The collected data proves the appalling deterioration of their rights and their extreme vulnerability as a direct result of the US occupation. The research was 1st published by the BRussells Tribunal. The present version is an update:

http://3iii.org/resources/deterioration-of-iraqi-womens-rights-and-living-conditions-under-occupation

In his article "Mirage of improvement in Iraq", the independent journalist Dahr Jamail, studied different sources addressing the situation faced by the Iraqi people. He concluded that elementary arithmetic indicates that currently over half the population of Iraq are either refugees, in need of emergency aid, wounded, or dead:
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000706.php

The propaganda used by the occupation and its government obliges us to redouble our efforts and continue the struggle to defend the legitimate and legal rights of Iraq and of its displaced people. We have a lot of ideas on how to develop this campaign and how to implement the proposal itself, but we are certain you have more. Please inform us and make suggestions. We are but coordinators of your actions. We hope you can be our speakers to get the proposal adopted wherever you are and to inform us of your various achievements. We believe that all actions in favour of suffering Iraqis should be encouraged, but only implementing our proposal: "Iraqi oil revenues for Iraqi refugees", would be a decisive remedy.

Already, on December 11th 2007, a team of eminent lawyers, including Curtis Doebbler, Naji Harraj, and Elias Khouri have presented the proposal at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. They informed us that they will attend the next meeting in March and defend it there. Details of their initial presentation at the 6th Session of the Council can be found here:

http://3iii.org/campaign/oral-statement-to-the-human-rights-council-6th-session-2nd-part-11december-2007

If your organization endorses our proposal, please let us know, so we can add it to the list. It would add moral weight and credibility to all our efforts.

Eminent lawyers endorsed the proposal. Please, if you are a lawyer let us know, in order to add you to our consultative list of jurists.

We hope many endorsers take initiative locally and according to their respective specialities, skills, organizations and contacts and let us know the development of their own efforts. Springs joining together make a big river.

Knowing the importance of artists in diffusing messages of solidarity and justice we began a section on our website where we will present works of artists in solidarity with Iraqis. Please send us relevant material to publish:

http://3iii.org/resources/?c=Testimonies

Recent reports on the plight of displaced Iraqis can be found at the following links:
Amnesty International report: Millions in flight: the Iraqi refugee crisis:

http://3iii.org/resources/millions-in-flight-the-iraqi-refugee-crisishttpwwwamnestyorgenalfresco_asset7c1959c7-a31c-11dc-8d74-6f45f39984e5mde140412007enhtml-amesty-international

Unicef report on education: Little respite for Iraq’s children in 2007:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_42256.html

UNHCR latest reports on Iraqi refugees and returnees:
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=briefing&id=47626dbe14
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=news&id=4762b3554
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/iraq?page=briefing&id=47592e1a6

Article on the plight of displaced Iraqi minorities: U.S. withdrawal debate ignores Iraq refugee crisis:
http://www.christiansofiraq.com/refugeecrisesep277.html

Please accept our best wishes for this new year,

We hope, together, coordinated and organized, is enough to pressure and achieve justice for the millions of displaced Iraqis.

salam,

hana al bayaty - coordinator
Iraqi International Initiative on refugees http://www.blogger.com/www.3iii.org