Brussels, 01/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - Approved by the leaders of the EU, the new partnership framework between the EU and priority-countries in Africa, which was proposed by the European Commission to curb the migration crisis (see EUROPE 11583), is a cause of dismay for development NGOs.
Whilst the European Council has been seduced by this new approach and wants the first migration pacts with these countries to be concluded before the end of the year, the NGO Coordination SUD spoke out on Thursday 30 June against “the use of development aid for a strictly security approach to migration”. The partnership framework establishes positive or negative incentives applied to the countries according to their propensity to cooperate, especially by favouring the return and readmission of migrants to their country of origin or to the countries through which they would have transited.
“Development aid is not a tool for controlling migration!”, Coordination SUD states, strongly condemning the decision to push migrants and refugees back from the EU's doors.
“The European Union's cynicism in its response to the humanitarian crisis of migrants and refugees is clearly scandalous. Public development aid should not be conditional upon migrant flow management purposes, hijacked from its first objective of responding to the essential needs of the most vulnerable, as stated in the Lisbon Treaty”, says Philippe Jahshan, the head of Coordination SUD.
CNCD 11.11.11 and Ciré (Coordination and Initiatives supporting Refugees and Foreigners) have also criticised an approach that is exclusively repressive of migration, and the use of development aid for this purpose. “The objective is to keep African migrants outside the Schengen area at the risk of seeing them exposed to ill-treatment (detention, forced registration) and to being returned to countries where fundamental rights are not respected - in violation of international law and the right of asylum”, the NGOs state. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)