The incongruity of the UK, co-architect of the war on Iraq, pushing this regional processing proposal will not be lost on most people.
The British governments proposal for a global asylum re-think was presented to European Union Justice Ministers at an informal meeting of the European Union Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council on 28 and 29 March. It described itself as pro-refugee but anti-asylum seeking strategy, envisaging the establishment of so-called regional protection areas (RPAs) in countries that receive high numbers of asylum seekers. To simplify, the proposal suggests that an asylum seeker should remain in one of these Protection Areas, or be sent back to one if they have arrived independently in a country outside that region, for six months until the country of origin situation improves. Only if there is no improvement would resettlement to another country be organised. The suggestion is that RPAs would be managed by the UN High Commission for Refugees. Turkey, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, northern Somalia and Morocco have all been mooted as possible RPAs.
The British proposal recognises that RPAs will never entirely substitute for domestic asylum systems; that new and complicated conflicts and human rights abuse will occur that will not be resolvable in the region. But it does attempt to shift the burden of responsibility back onto the region where the problem, apparently, originated. Against a background of war in Iraq, which many feared would displace hundreds of thousands of people, and where neighbouring countries have expressed their inability to cope with any more refugees, the incongruity, to put it politely, of the UK, co-architect of the war, pushing this regional processing proposal will not be lost on many people.
The power of a non-paper
Although the UK has insisted that this proposal is a non-paper (designed for discussion only), we should not be complacent about its impact. It is very detailed and has significant potential to influence the debate on global asylum, not least because of the political weight of its sponsors. The proposal received a cautious welcome from EU Justice Ministers. Italy, for example, was very enthusiastic, while Portugal thought it raised more questions than it answered. Justice and Home Affairs Ministers invited the EU Commission (in close cooperation with UNHCR) to further explore the ideas contained in the proposal, and to report to the European Council meeting in Thessaloniki in June 2003. All players who have an interest in asylum reform will now have to engage with the document.
The UK is not alone in exploring regional solutions to the problems involved. Many countries and institutions have been engaged in this. In his statement to the same JHA Council, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, outlined his organisations latest vision for reform of global refugee protection, rooted in the convention plus initiative launched in September 2002. This project to draw up a new global refugee management plan which can respond to current tensions worldwide, also looks for solutions in the regions of origin:
Mr Lubbers stated:
...by enhancing protection and increasing the prospects for durable solutions in regions of origin, we open up new possibilities for the return of refugees to countries of first asylum. To make this credible, such an approach requires effective burden sharing with the provision of development assistance for refugees in host countries as well as reintegration and self-reliance activities . The UK proposal acknowledges that there will be elements within UNHCR that will not welcome the return of asylum seekers for regional processing. UNHCR has rejected the more extreme aspects of the proposal but agrees that elements of it contribute to the much needed re-organisation of asylum at the global level. But the drafters of the UK proposal envisage a pivotal role for UNHCR and consider the convention plus negotiations as the perfect forum for cooperation, particularly because it is in its formative stages and regarded as malleable. Aside from carrying out its historical task of providing food, shelter, healthcare and protection from return to danger, UNHCRs involvement would give RPAs their necessary legal and political imprimatur.
Problems with regional protection areas
The UK proposal estimates the cost of supporting an individual asylum seeker in the UK at $10,000 per year. By contrast, the average annual spend by UNHCR on each refugee or person of concern is $50. It is clear that global asylum policy needs serious re-thinking, when the alternative is pumping huge amounts of money into cumbersome asylum procedures, where abuse is rife and delays cause injustice and untold tensions among governments, host communities, asylum seekers and refugee organisations.
But although the UK proposal places considerable emphasis on the UKs legal obligations regarding Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that no person should be sent to a country where torture, ill-treatment or inhuman or degrading treatment might be faced the human rights records and instability of many of the proposed locations for RPAs, pave the way for considerable legal difficulties ahead.
Another, more obvious, problem lies in the task of persuading poorer countries to house RPAs. The UK proposal has been criticised by human rights groups as a dumping exercise by rich states on to poorer ones. In an attempt to ward off such criticism, the proposal emphasises that all states wishing to send their asylum seekers to the RPAs must operate resettlement schemes at home. Furthermore, resettlement figures should be generous and at least exceed the numbers of spontaneous arrivals. One might be forgiven for interpreting such an assurance as pure spin. After all, the UK proposal was largely in response to a sharp increase in UK asylum numbers: a primary domestic concern in the UK is to decrease asylum applications by 50% by September 2003.
The UK proposal also advocates the establishment of transit processing centres (TPCs) on the outskirts of the EU. Albania, Bulgaria and Romania have been put forward as possible locations as they are major transit routes for migrants. Ideally, asylum seekers arriving in the EU from these areas would be transferred to a TPC where their claims would be assessed by the host country. At the EU Justice and Home Affairs meeting, concerns were raised that clusters of vulnerable people in border regions will serve as an attraction to traffickers and smugglers.
For those in favour, convincing states bordering the EU to establish TPCs will be difficult because of the likelihood that illegal migrants would stay on their territory. Perhaps early bids to join the EU could have an effect on levels of cooperation.
Less developed countries will need strong reassurances that they will not become the future dumping grounds for the wests responsibilities. The EU hosts a mere 5% of the worlds refugee population. If the UK gets to dominate discussions and push its agenda unilaterally, we could witness much worse refugee crises than exist today.
