Chang L'Europe Murs. A Berlin il ya vingt ans, les représentants des nations Démocratiques accueillaient unanimement the chute du Mur comme une victoire de la liberté. «Toute personne a le droit to leave any country including his own ": Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 was finally able to apply. In a 1991 resolution, the Council of Europe welcomed that "political changes can now move freely across Europe, which is a prerequisite for the survival and development of free societies and flourishing cultures " (sic). Freedom is not slow to fear the consequences. It reminded first that "the right to move freely, as provided by international conventions, does not mean freedom to settle in another country. " It also worried "dramatic increase in the number of asylum seekers in Western Europe and some countries of Central Europe, tempted to use the Geneva Convention to circumvent immigration restrictions .
Wall Mediterranean
New front lines appear at the end of the Cold War, along which other walls, virtual or real, but more waterproof and very deadly, will out of the ground or mark the seas. To the east, the European Union (EU) enlargement will bargain in exchange for a commitment of new members to monitor their borders. Each must build his own Berlin Wall. On the rim of the Mediterranean, the EU summit in Tampere in 1999 advocated a "regional cooperation between member states and third countries bordering the Union in the fight against organized crime, which includes " human trafficking. "
Alternately described as "illegal" and " Victims' such repressed "traffickers" of international scope as they help each other, migrants are now the target of a speech warranting the fights for better protection. The Summit of Heads of State in Seville (June 2002) will devote the fight against illegal immigration as priority for the Union in its negotiations with neighboring states.
Thus, the Old Continent, consider themselves unable to control its borders, began methodically - in defiance of existing international agreements - to offload this task Upstream, on the country of origin or transit. Migreurop, a network of researchers , popularized the concept of "outsourcing", borrowed from economists to describe such restrictions on freedom of movement provided by international texts.
borders of the Schengen (see maps) now have a second enclosure, external, requiring the cooperation of third countries. Euphemistically named "external dimension of immigration policy and asylum" by the Hague Programme of 2004, the "outsourcing "Carries a whole series of ideological obfuscation. This is, in fact, to discard the border control on non-European states, in partnership as opaque and unjust, but the leaders of Twenty-Seven will have to present the case as a "concerted management of migratory flows".
The "outsourcing" involves the establishment of a flexible, always a little farther from the border. Its two main forms are the relocation of controls and the outsourcing of the "fight against illegal immigration . The big losers: the right of asylum, that all EU countries have yet committed to ratifying the Geneva Convention on Refugees, and the right to leave "any country including his own " proclaimed by various international instruments.
By the 1990s, the Union has sent advisers, particularly among accession countries, to stem migration to the source. A network of 'immigration liaison officers "was formally established in 2004 with the objective of " contribute to the prevention illegal immigration and the fight against this phenomenon, the return of illegal immigrants and management of illegal immigration. " Thus, immigration is seen described as "illegal" even before it occurred. The main task of these liaison officers is to assist local authorities to check the validity of airport travel documents, which in practice may lead them to violate the sovereignty of the country of departure.
A 2001 EU directive introduced a system of financial penalties for carriers guilty carriage of persons whose passports or visas are not valid. Strong deterrent - these fines can amount to 500,000 euros, the return of persons intercepted being borne by companies - they require staff without special competence to make, before boarding a selection of travelers. This privatization of controls reduces the filtering work on arrival. It has serious consequences when such departures are justified by the need for protection for asylum seekers, for if, in principle, they can not be used against the irregularity of their situation, or failure visa once they arrive in the host country, they must still have been able to achieve. So in August 2007, seven Tunisian fishermen were charged and jailed by an Italian court for "aiding illegal immigration, and their boats confiscated because they had saved from sinking a boat and its passengers transported Lampedusa (Sicily), the nearest port, as required by maritime regulations yet.
is an agency of the European Union called Frontex, which, since 2005, coordinates maritime interception operations between the African coast and Canary Islands, or in the Sicilian Channel. José Luis Zapatero, the English prime minister, welcomed the end of 2009, reducing by half the arrivals 'illegal' in Spain by sea, however, indications that the mortality of migrants at sea or in the desert, has it not fallen (see maps "Deaths in transit). While strengthening the barriers do not restrict departures, it requires the use of migration routes diverted more dangerous. No one knows under what conditions is done (or not), when responding to Frontex, the identification of potential asylum seekers, a move in principle compulsory under European standards for access to the territory of member states. Besides the fact that she runs away from democratic control, this relocation, which became the symbol Frontex, enables European countries to evade the requirements imposed on their territories by their commitments in the field of human rights.
Outsourcing border control is the frame of "global partnership with countries of origin and transit" enshrined in the European pact on asylum and immigration between the bloc in 2008 at the initiative of France, who was then president of the Union and had made the fight against "suffered immigration" his hobbyhorse. On behalf of "synergy between migration and development", the text puts countries from which and through which migrants pass en route to the Union position border guards obliged. They are thus obliged to protect remote European borders in exchange counterparties, sometimes financial, sometimes political.
The "advanced status" granted by Morocco to the European Union In 2008 reward a country that has spared no efforts to play the role expected of him in the management of migration. In autumn 2005, during attempts to cross the "fences" that closes the border between Spain and Morocco in Ceuta and Melilla ( 5), twenty people from sub-Saharan were killed by fall, by suffocation or the bullets of the Moroccan army. The massacre and the ensuing deadly transfers to the desert area along the Algerian border, although closed, were widely publicized by the Moroccan government keen to show his zeal. Less commented upon by the press was the tragedy that occurred April 28, 2008 off Al Hoceima (north-eastern Morocco): thirty people, including four children, were drowned when their inflatable boat had been, according to testimony consistent, willingly punctured by the forces of order. No independent investigation has shed light on this event.
agreements "Readmission" signed with neighboring countries is a key component of the device. To deport an illegal alien on European soil, it is his country of origin or, now, the country he has traversed in the last acknowledge. Aware that the countries find little incentive to accept the return of their citizens - let alone that of migrants who have merely transited among them - the European states have embarked on an endless cycle of negotiations, whose logic leads to a flourishing corruption and a general decline of human rights, including Senegal, Ukraine, or in some Balkan countries.
direct victim of this war waged by the Union and its member states against candidates in exile: the right asylum. Postponed or withheld in the "buffer countries" which is assigned to protect the fortress Europe, those who would qualify for refugee status are denied the opportunity to ask. On behalf of an alleged "burden sharing", the Union pretended to believe that asylum seekers will no longer accommodate it will be in good condition at the allies she has monetize collaboration. It encourages, in countries that have neither the capacity nor the political logistics of integrating refugees, such as the Maghreb, the xenophobic attacks against a population resented and forced into a precarious life.
It also encourages the development of a multitude of detention camps - it funds - as in Ukraine since 2004. Yet is it a signatory to the Geneva Convention on Refugees. This is not the case of Libya, where mistreatment of migrants and refugees are widely documented. However, since May 2009, Italy pushes migrant boats to put them back in the hands of the Libyan authorities. In doing so, it violates both international maritime law and the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of persons who may need protection.
blockade reversed
These violations of principles committing the Union in terms of human rights committed by a member state without causing any reaction, if not solutions to enable it to continue to do so. In July 2009, the European Commission proposed to Libya to initiate "cooperation to achieve a balanced and joint management of migration flows, while the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offered its good offices to "manage Humanitarian detention centers.
Beyond the question of infringement of the rights of refugees, the manipulation by the Union's partnership with third countries dangerously first freedom: that of coming and going. It also affects the migration of those who do not particularly wish to go to Europe ... The concept of co-development, which may seem generous inspired by combining migration and development, has been used this regression. For if they do not formally constitute a component, issues related to security boundaries are prominent in a fool's bargain: the number of proposed measures and funding promised concern the fight against "illegal immigration" - that is to say, given the country of departure, against emigration. In April 2010, the President of Mali, listening to its diaspora, challenged "the systematic renewed at the border."
discourse of co-development allows to accept unilateral decisions European populations suddenly classified as "agents of their own development, and simultaneously to propagate the idea in Europe but also in places of departure, that the development of countries of origin will curb illegal immigration. Double trap: the economic takeoff of a country has in fact tend to promote the mobility of its citizens, as to "help" is often misused by leaders. But luring effective because, for their mission filter, countries lock their borders and become jailers of their own nationals.
These are the tangible results of development cooperation, for example, between Spain and some its African neighbors: Algeria and Morocco, the law of "illegal emigration" a misdemeanor, while Senegal punishes the facts. People are not fooled by this blockade reversed. As the sober headline the Senegalese daily Le Soleil on the eve of the Euro-African conference in Rabat in 2006: Outsourcing is "Europe close our borders." MORICE AND CLAIRE ALAIN RODIER
