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| Bishop Patrick
O’Donoghue shares his thoughts. Taken from his address at the House of
Commons on 24 February. One of the most disturbing issues of our time is that of the forced movement of people from their homes and their countries. Sometimes these people are called asylum seekers, on other occasions refugees, internally displaced people and exiles. Whatever name you want to give to them, as far as I’m concerned, they are all victims of persecution, human rights abuses, brutal armed conflicts, unjust social, economic, and political structures of our society. Most people can look to their governments to guarantee and protect their basic human rights and physical wellbeing but refugees cannot make that assumption. They are struggling for survival or normality in their lives; in search of shelter, the basic necessities of life, a sense of identity and belonging, and most of all protection from persecution. Indeed they are all ordinary human beings in extraordinary circumstances. This concept of PROTECTION, I believe, forms the core of the 1951 Convention on the Status of refugees. In fact it is the duty of states, especially those who have signed up to the 51 Convention and the 67 Protocol, to ensure that refugees are not prevented from accessing their asylum procedures. The entire process, from arrival to final decision, should be as short as is consistent with the full and fair process of law. Refugees should benefit from economic and social rights and most important of all they should not be deported without due process or forcibly returned to face dangers. I would like to speak about some disturbing trends currently affecting the lives and future of refugees. More and more countries, in the least developed areas of the world, are subject to political instability, underdevelopment and external pressures (military or otherwise) Not only are they the source of refugee flows, but they also play host to the majority of refugees in the world. It is not the developed world that bears the responsibility of refugee support, it is the least developed countries! On the other hand, the developed countries are becoming more and more restrictive in their commitment and practices towards refugee protection. The ‘Pacific Solution’ pioneered by Australia is one extreme form denigrating refugees. The standards of the European Union too have been declining over the years. As the ‘Harmonisation Process’ proceeds it tends towards codifying the restrictive policy differences between Member States. Deterrent policies, such as the restrictive interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, Visa Policies, Carrier Sanctions, the concept of Safe Country, are all indicative of the downgrading of the protection standards in the European Union. To ensure the protection of refugees is vitally important, but equally so, to address the reasons as to why people are forced to flee their homes and countries in the first case. The reasons may seem very complex and complicated but they can be summarized in two words: violence and poverty. In order to understand why so many countries produce refugees, one has only to think of the arbitrary borders which many developing countries inherited from colonial days, their long history of economic exploitation, their disadvantaged position in the global economy, together with the current proliferation of weaponry, manufactured in the developed countries. Often when we representatives of civil society criticize the government’s refugee and asylum policy we are challenged to provide an alternative. It is important to emphasize that we are not the government; we don’t have the power or the resources or teams of civil servants to help us to develop state policies. That, I believe, is the duty of the State. But we civil society groups have the moral force of conviction that all human beings have rights and must be treated with dignity. We also have a detailed knowledge of international norms that sustain justice and peace. It is in this context that I welcome the Asylum Rights Campaign report ‘Providing Protection in the 21st Century – Refugee Rights at the Heart of Asylum Policy.’ The government cannot now say that there is no alternative! |
