Refugees should be at the heart of asylum policies – NGOs

World Refugee Day was marked yesterday by images beamed around the world of Hollywood star Angelina Jolie clutching the bars behind which asylum seekers in Lyster barracks were staying.

But apart from a week-long schedule of activities and performances by refugees, refugee-workers and NGOs, there was silence from the political parties who are usually busy issuing daily statements on anything from pedestrianisation to public finances.

Yesterday human rights NGO Aditus and the Jesuit Refugee Service called on the Maltese authorities to put refugees “at the heart” of asylum policies.

“We’re urging them to undertake a comprehensive consultation process with a view to bringing Malta’s asylum policies and practices in line with international and European human rights standards,” said Aditus’s chairperson Dr Neil Falzon.

Discussions at a seminar organised by Aditus and JRS yesterday focused on detention, reception standards particularly for vulnerable persons and integration, three themes identified as the most important areas requiring immediate and long-lasting action by the Maltese authorities and the European Union institutions and Member States.

“Whilst the participating organisations acknowledged the challenges faced by the Maltese authorities in receiving asylum-seekers, a clear concern expressed is that policy decisions are too often based on considerations other than the protection needs and lawful rights of asylum-seekers and refugees,” JRS director Fr Joseph Cassar said.

Human Rights Watch yesterday also called for human rights to be placed at the heart of EU migration and asylum policy. The international human rights watchdog upheaval in North Africa had brought thousands of migrants and asylum seekers to European shores, and led to growing numbers of migrant deaths at sea.

But efforts to reform common asylum rules and enhance solidarity within the EU remain largely stalled, while an emphasis on border enforcement has come at the expense of protecting migrants' rights and access to asylum.

“The EU talks a lot these days about promoting its values in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But when it comes to migrants and asylum seekers, those values are all too often thrown out the window.”

HRW said the EU falls behind on reforming the Dublin regulation which requires asylum claimsto be heard in the first EU state a migrant reaches – placing a disproportionate burden on states at the EU’s external borders, like Malta, Italy and particularly Greece, which has a broken asylum system.

HRW also said Greece was experiencing a continued asylum crisis, while insufficient efforts to prevent deaths at sea of boat migrants fleeing Libya had resulted in 1,500 deaths. It also criticised the limited resettlement by EU countries of refugees from North Africa, while Egypt and Tunisia continue to host hundreds of thousands.