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Website: http://www.migreurop.org
European Borders Observatory
The European Borders Observatory looks at borders from an external, independent viewpoint. The project disseminates information about the rights of migrants and violations of these rights at the borders, to raise awareness about the conditions migrants face and advocate for improvement. The network is also running a campaign against readmission agreements.
| Project Update March 2011 The EBO is now working on the next annual report publication on migrant’s rights violation at European borders (October 2011). This third report will be focused on European ports and how European Members States deal with the issue of stowaways. The network is still working on its campaign against readmission agreements and has planned to launch an electronic book (“deported voices”) using voice of migrants in order to explain what is concretely a deportation and emphasizing the important role of readmission agreements in it. The campaign “right of access” is still going on with a 3 weeks of joint visits from the 7th to the 31st of March (MEPs, MPs and NGOs) in detention centres in Europe and Africa. The goal is to show that there is still a lack of access to NGOs in these places even if the European “return directive” allows it since December 2010. For you information, Migreurop worked also on a report on Frontex for the European Parliament (December 2010) and the network is also working on the next edition of the Atlas (November 2011), hoping to find an English publisher. |
- Read more about the impact of project up to May 2011 here
Migreurop News
Migreurop encourages the EU not to be afraid of democracy in North Africa
The question of the European borders is more and more in the headlines (e.g. the Southern border with Libya, Tunisia and Egypt today; the Eastern one with Greece and Turkey a month ago; Canary Island 5 years ago, etc.). For years borders are one of the most important concerns of the European Union, haggling with neighboring countries. Unfortunately, migrants are often the terms of trade. In the framework of the European Borders Observatory, Migreurop, via its recent press releases, explains how in the midterm the EU has to deeply change its foreign policy regarding migration with neighboring countries and in the short term, it has to welcome refugees in respect of international and European law.
On Migreurop’s website, 3 press releases:
http://www.migreurop.org/article1810.html
http://www.migreurop.org/article1817.html,
http://www.migreurop.org/article1820.html
(March 2011)
New publication: European borders: Controls, detention & deportations (2010)
In its second annual report, Migreurop emphasizes three main measures taken by the authorities against the candidates to migration: the controls of their movements, detention and deportation. Based on evidences from fact finding missions, the report gives dramatic examples of the war against migrants which implies a general decline of the law protecting the freedom and integrity of human beings. Denouncing the ‘externalization’ process of the European Union migratory policy, Migreurop shows how third countries are obliged not only to readmit the migrants chased from Europe, but also to keep them on their own territory.
Migreurop organizes a mission after the racist violence in Italy
Following the serious events of 7 January 2010 in Rosarno (Southern Italy), where migrant workers were the victims of racist attacks, over 700 of them were transferred to camps in Crotone (Calabria) and Bari (Apulia). Migreurop organised an urgent international fact-finding mission in the framework of its campaign “For a right of access to places of detention”. The mission was composed by national MPs, MEPs and members of the Migreurop network, who travelled to two camps around Bari on Friday 15 January.
Read more about the campaign “right of access” on Migreurop website
(January 2010)
New publication: Atlas des Migrants en Europe: Géographie Critique des Politiques Migratoires (2009)
The Atlas of migrants in Europe describes the process for the organisation of the Union’s borders in its own continent and throughout the world, as well as the way in which European states deploy their migration controls there. The mechanisms established by European states in (and with) third countries, like the detention and exclusion of foreigners in Europe and in Mediterranean countries, are cross-level phenomena, that is, they affect every geographical scale. Hence, cartography makes it possible to illustrate and interpret the securitarian concept applied to the issue of migration in Europe and beyond, while leading the classical portrayals of the border to evolve.
Europe’s Murderous Border (2009)For its first Annual report on the violation of human rights at borders, Migreurop has chosen to maintain the four symbolic poles of the misdeeds of the policy enacted by the European Union in the field of immigration and asylum. The Greek-Turkish border, the Calais region in north-western France, that of Oujda in eastern Morocco and the island of Lampedusa in the far south of Italy, are as many stops, more or less lengthy, sometimes definitive, in the odyssey of thousands of people who, every year, by trying to reach Europe, seek to escape the fate that they have been dealt through
chosen or forced exiles.
