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In a guest article, the Union’s legal policy spokesman calls for asylum seekers in the EU to be deported to Rwanda following the British model.
The British government no longer wants to give migrants who enter the country irregularly the opportunity to apply for asylum. Instead, they should be able to be deported to a third country such as Rwanda. One deal provides for them to then apply for asylum there. The conservative government wants to use this to prevent people from crossing the English Channel in small boats. The highest court in Great Britain declared the asylum pact with Rwanda illegal a few months ago. Critics accuse the East African country of human rights violations.
The legal policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Dr. Günter Krings (CDU), was in Rwanda and was able to gain an insight into the situation. He also sees Rwanda as an opportunity to repatriate asylum seekers. However, unlike the British, he wants to do so with a large humanitarian admission quota. He explains this in his guest article:
According to the traffic light coalition agreement, protection can be relocated to third countries
Can asylum seekers be sent to countries outside the EU to receive refugee protection there? The coalition agreement of the traffic light coalition is open to outsourcing this protection to third countries, at least in exceptional cases. In March, the Conference of Minister Presidents pushed through a specific review mandate from the federal government. And the CDU’s new policy program wants “everyone who applies for asylum in Europe … to be transferred to a safe third country and to undergo a procedure there.” After some teething problems, Great Britain is currently beginning such cooperation with the central African country of Rwanda. Together with two colleagues from my group, I was able to get an on-site picture of the situation in Rwanda two weeks ago: not only in discussions with President Kagame and his most important ministers, but also with those responsible for accepting refugees and representatives of the UN.
Third country model is an important building block for the restructuring of European refugee policy
A restructuring of the European refugee policy, in which the third country model should be an important component, is right and long overdue. The current situation not only overwhelms the integration efforts of many municipalities in Germany, but is also deeply inhumane. Many migrants pay with their lives for the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean or through the deserts of North Africa. Young men are more likely to survive it as a family. Anyone who doesn’t have the money to pay smugglers has little chance. Escape to Europe is not governed by the law of humanity, but by the law of the strongest.
First and foremost, we must eliminate perverse incentives
If we want to end this cynicism in current refugee policy, we must first and foremost eliminate false incentives: The core of refugee protection under international law is the “non-refoulement” principle, according to which no person in need of protection may be sent back to a country where they are at risk of persecution or inhumane treatment . However, people on the run do not have the right to freely choose their destination country. If this is allowed to continue as before, it will hardly be possible to correctly distinguish between those who are politically persecuted and people who (understandably) just want to lead a better life. Outsourcing the asylum procedures to countries outside the EU makes an important contribution to eliminating these false incentives through de facto freedom of choice.
Germany is one of the main destination countries for irregular migration in the EU
However, this alone will not be enough, at least in the foreseeable future. Since Germany is one of the main destination countries for irregular migration in the EU, the CDU policy program rightly contains a clear commitment to the principles of the Dublin system. This means that an asylum application must be submitted immediately upon entering EU territory. Where Germany carries out border controls with its neighboring countries, they must therefore be combined with the consistent rejection of asylum seekers. They are “refugees” in the real sense of the word: their flight is already complete when they reach Europe, and for the vast majority of them there is no justification for continuing their journey within the EU. A third element against false incentives in migration policy is the new EU border procedure that has just been decided. However, its impact will be limited, particularly due to many exceptions and limited capacity.
For the third country model, Europe needs partners who comply with international human rights protection for refugees. There is much to suggest that Rwanda meets this requirement. The Copenhagen criteria for admitting states into the EU are not the benchmark here. Due to the collective experience of violence and genocide, which culminated in the horrific mass murders 30 years ago, Rwandan society itself has a diverse experience of displacement. This is one of the reasons why it accepts around 160,000 refugees from the Congo and Burundi. Rwanda is a functioning state and the only one that is already cooperating with the UN refugee agency to take in migrants stranded in Libya and bring them to a new home. The country, together with Great Britain, has now developed an asylum procedure with strong legal protection. And the remarkable thing about it is that it legally guarantees even rejected asylum seekers the right to stay.
Accommodating refugees can have immediate positive effects on the population
Rwanda’s interest in cooperation with European countries also arises from the fact that the admission of refugees – as in the case of the agreement with the UK – is also linked to economic cooperation projects that advance the development of the still poor country. Even the accommodation of refugees themselves can have direct positive effects for the population: for example, when the internationally funded health clinic in a camp for Congolese refugees we visit can also be used by the local population.
What sets our CDU plans apart from the British Rwanda model is that we want to combine the accommodation of asylum seekers in third countries with large humanitarian reception contingents. Instead of tens of thousands of mostly young men making their way to Germany every year, we would then have a comparable number of people (mostly families and those in particular need of protection) who are waiting in camps in Africa or Asia entering our country on a regular route and without endangering their lives can get. That would be a refugee policy that, for the first time, would have earned the label “humanitarian” or “Christian”.
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