January 17-24, 2022 Mixed Migration Update

Welcome to MMU! Here—in the time it takes to read one feature—you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, & links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.

Jan 24

Spotlight

This week, the EU inaugurated the European Agency for Asylum (EUAA), replacing and building on the 10-year old European Asylum Support Office. Nominally, the EUAA will have greater resources and a clearer mandate than EASO did. Practically, this won’t make a difference. There are many problems in EU migration management and not enough bureaucracy is not one of them—not when that bureaucracy is incapable of, and disinterested in, ensuring its mandates are implemented in good faith. When it comes to migration management, there is no eu in accountability, and no accountability in the EU—and abstract though this may sound, the consequences are real:

In early October, Greek authorities took over cash benefits distribution from UNHCR, without the infrastructure in place to ensure continuity, depriving 34.000 asylum seekers of basic support for ~2 months. This, while cutting off all support to recognized refugees and rejected asylum seekers remaining indefinitely on Greek soil—despite clear (but toothless) EU admonition that this violates the Reception Conditions Directive, the Qualifications Directive, the Return Directive, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
As Mobile Info Team document in Control and Containment, last November Greek authorities terminated the existing Skype-based asylum registration hotline, which allowed displaced people to lodge asylum claims and transit the process in their communities of settlement. All future asylum claims will need to be lodged in Greece’s existing RICs, which lack the capacity to process applications originating in mainland Greece, effectively cutting off between 30.000 and 44.000 people from access to the asylum procedure, in violation of Greek and EU law.
As Legal Center Lesvos documents in their latest quarterly report, in late October, the European Court of Human Rights announced it would be investigating 32 cases, filed between December 2020 and August 2021, alleging the pushback of 47 asylum seekers from Greek soil—just a fraction of the thousands of cases documented in recent years.

EASO has been present in Greece since 2011. Since 2015, EU migration management support to Greece has added up to nearly €3.4 billion. Despite the length of the EU’s engagement and cost of the EU’s investment, as of early 2022 it remains the job of small NGOs to hold Greek authorities accountable for their obligations under EU rules and regulations. A new asylum agency won’t plug the accountability black hole at the EU’s external borders unless EU leaders and member states commit to respecting their own rules and regulations—not when Greece’s rights-violating practices are not just allowed to proceed unimpeded, but end up finding their way into the working drafts of EU-level policy reforms.

Media credit: ReFocus Media Labs, A Fresh Start

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Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Monday, a 5.3 magnitude earthquake (followed 2 hours later by a 4.9 magnitude aftershock) struck Qadis province in northeastern Afghanistan, destroying at least 700 homes and killing at least 26 people. On the same day, police in Pekanbaru, Indonesia, violently dispersed a peaceful protest in front of UNHCR offices by displaced Afghans denied refugee status by Indonesian authorities and kept out of resettlement rosters. | On Tuesday, the EU announced it would finance €268 million of UN-facilitated education, heath, and livelihoods programming to mitigate economic and humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. On the same day, 209 evacuees with prior ties to Canada’s civilian and military presence in Afghanistan arrived in Vancouver via Pakistan, joining ~7.000 resettled Afghan refugees already in Canada. | On Wednesday, the International Labor Organization tallied that employment in Afghanistan has declined by half a million jobs since the Taliban took power last August, forecasting that job losses could grow to 900.000 by the summer if current trends are sustained. | On Friday, Taliban officials announced that the EU had re-opened its embassy in Kabul, while European officials admitted they had restored a minimal diplomatic presence to oversee aid delivery and monitor human rights and humanitarian conditions. | This Monday, Iranian officials authorized diesel imports to Afghanistan through pipelines in Iran, which ought to reduce fuel costs for Afghan civilians through the winter.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, a fire destroyed 29 shelters at a Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhiya district, near Cox’s Bazaar. | On Wednesday, the ICJ set hearing dates for February 21, 23, 25, and 28 to hear the Junta’s objections to the genocide case brought forward by the Gambia with respect to the Burmese military’s treatment of the Rohingya. On the same day, Indonesian authorities admitted that, of the 105 Rohingya refugees rescued from a drifting boat off the coast of Aceh, 8 women aged between 15 and 24 had gone missing in the interval between their disembarkation in December and a UNHCR registration exercise in January. | On Friday, Al Jazeera reported that several thousand Burmese civilians, recently displaced from eastern Myanmar, remain at risk in threadbare camps along the Moei river, within range of Tatmadaw weaponry but prevented from moving further inland by Thai authorities. | On Saturday, local authorities reported that, since January 5, ~2.000 civilians displaced by fighting in Myanmar’s western Chin State have crossed the border into India’s Mizoram State, joining ~15.000 Chin refugees who fled to Mizoram last summer. | On Sunday, Thai police detained 107 Burmese nationals who had entered Thailand via irregular means to pursue work opportunities.

Sources: al Jazeera, Global Voices, TOLOnews, Castlegar News, Prothom Alo, the Irrawaddy, ANTARA, the Indian Express, Thaiger.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Friday, Ethiopia’s deputy army chief ruled out a negotiated peace to end fighting in Tigray, explaining that Ethiopian forces were holding back from entering Tigray to prepare and resupply, and that Ethiopia would not see peace until the TPLF was eliminated. On the same day, UNHCR officials demanded safe passage for 25.000 Eritrean refugees living in the Mai Aini and Hadi Arush refugee camps in Tigray, where lack of access to food, clean water, and medicines has dramatically affected already vulnerable communities.

IDP protection along the Gulf of Guinea
Last Monday, civil society in Borno State mobilized to demand justice on the heels of the sexual assault of a young IDP woman by an NGO worker, leading to her taking her own life. | On Wednesday, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths visited Borno State and transmitted the UN’s support for IDP reintegration into their communities of origin. | On Friday, UNHCR issued a $60 million appeal to support civilians displaced by conflict on the coast of Lake Chad in Cameroon’s Far North region, driven by water scarcity, which destroyed 112 villages over the last month. On Sunday, Nigerian Federal Commissioner of Refugees, Migrants and Internally-Displaced Persons Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim announced a forthcoming review of Nigeria’s migration policies, to better manage its unique dynamics as a country of origin and destination for both labor migrants and displaced people.

Sources: Reuters, VOA, Vanguard, the Cable.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker abuse in Libya
Last Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres revealed that there are currently more than 12.000 asylum seekers held captive across Libya without access to due process or any ability to challenge the legality of their detention. | On Tuesday, 3 European NGOs filed pleadings with the ICC demanding that it open war crimes investigations against Libyan officials involved in asylum seeker detention, abuse, and trafficking, as well as Italian and Maltese officials involved in maritime pushbacks.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Tuesday, Coalition airstrikes in Sana’a killed 20 civilians, including 14 people in a single strike on a high-ranking Ansar Allah official’s home. | On Friday, Coalition airstrikes in Yemen struck a communications facility in Hodeidah, cutting off internet access throughout Yemen, as well as a prison complex in Saada, killing between 100 and 200 detainees. | On Monday, Reuters reported on the growing costs of Yemen’s internet cut-off, including information vacuums and interruptions to remittance payments.

Internal displacement and enforced disappearance in Syria
Last Tuesday, a snowstorm struck the eastern Turkey and northern Syria and Iraq, trapping several thousand families in multiple IDP camps in northeastern Syria and exposing families to extreme cold and the risk of exposure to poisonous fumes as they try to keep warm. | On Sunday, the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria released figures tallying 1.790 Palestinians currently in detention in Syria, and 653 deaths in detention following torture, acknowledging that the total number of victims, Palestinian or of any other nationality, is likely much higher. | On Monday, OCHA announced that 3 children had died in IDP camps in northwest Syria, and another 2 were in critical condition, due to the extreme cold and poor shelter winterization. On the same day, KRG authorities announced the reopening of the Fishkhabour-Semalka border crossing, the only crossing point connecting northeast Syria to the outside world, after a month-long closure that severely constrained aid delivery.

Sources: AP, Reuters, al Jazeera, Middle East Monitor, ANSA, Middle East Eye.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through Europe

Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 61 asylum seekers, including an infant and a child, from a vessel in waters 60 kilometers south of Fuerteventura. | On Tuesday, SM rescued 62 asylum seekers from a vessel in waters 44 kilometers southeast of Fuerteventura, including a child born en route and the child’s mother. On the same day, SM rescued another 56 asylum seekers from a vessel in waters 42 kilometers south of Fuerteventura. | On Wednesday, Spanish authorities rescued 35 asylum seekers from a vessel that had drifted off-course to a point 210 kilometers north of Lanzarote. | On Thursday, SM rescued 60 asylum seekers, including 5 infants, from a vessel in waters 80 kilometers southwest of Fuerteventura. | On Saturday, SM rescued 295 asylum seekers from 6 vessels in waters off of Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. | On Sunday, SM rescued 150 asylum seekers from 4 vessels in waters off of Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, and La Graciosa.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Wednesday, the Louise Michel witnessed the Libyan Coast Guard intercept another vessel and fire live rounds at one asylum seeker who tried to swim toward the rescue ship. On the same day, the Mare Jonio rescued 100 asylum seekers from a sinking vessel, retrieving some from the water. Also on Wednesday, Tunisian Coast Guard officials rescued 21 asylum seekers, retrieved 4 lifeless bodies, and tallied 7 missing people from a vessel that sank near the Kerkenna Islands. | On Thursday, the Mare Jonio rescued 107 asylum seekers in the Central Mediterranean. | On Friday, the Geo Barents announced that, since Wednesday, it had rescued 439 asylum seekers in 6 separate operations, demanding the swift designation of a safe port of disembarkation. On the same day, the Italian Coast Guard rescued 305 asylum seekers in waters 20 miles off of Lampedusa.

The English Channel
Last Wednesday, UK Border Force vessels rescued 168 asylum seekers from 6 vessels in the English Channel, while French authorities intercepted another 126 attempting to cross.

Aegean Sea
Last Wednesday, the Turkish Coast Guard rescued 36 asylum seekers in waters off of Ayvalık district, whom they believe had been returned there from European waters. | On Saturday, Turkish authorities reported that they had rescued another 21 asylum seekers in waters off of Izmir, whom they believe had been returned there from European waters.

Caribbean Sea
Last Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a vessel carrying 19 asylum seekers in waters between Haiti and Puerto Rico, summarily returning them to Haitian shores.

Sources: EFE, the Civil Fleet, InfoMigrants, RescueMed, Reuters, BBC, Daily Sabah, TRT, el Vocero.

Europe

Baltics border brinksmanship
Last Tuesday, Polish authorities announced that, thus far this year, they had prevented 600 irregular border crossings from Belarus. | On Friday, FRONTEX director Fabrice Leggeri defended his agency’s questioned human rights credentials at an EU interior ministers’ summit in Vilnius to discuss strengthening border control. On the same day, Polish Foreign Minister Mariusz Kaminski disclosed that Poland had received 15.000 displaced Belarussians over 2021, 2.300 of whom filed asylum claims, leading to 1.200 decisions issued with a nearly 100% refugee recognition rate. | This Monday, euobserver revealed that Polish authorities have tried to insert language into an evolving EU Commission migration policy proposal that would allow authorities to summarily reject asylum applications by irregular entrants reaching EU soil via third countries, and allowing Polish authorities to accept asylum applications by irregular entrants only at border crossing points.

UK migration (mis)management
Last Wednesday, the High Court ruled that the Home Office’s administration of age assessments on arriving asylum seeker youths was unlawful, granting compensation to 2 plaintiffs wrongly assessed to be adults and denied age-appropriate services, and prompting the Home Office to discontinue age assessments in its reception facilities. | On Sunday, German police announced they would begin cracking down on the purchase of inflatable dinghies by smuggling rings to reduce irregular crossings of the English Channel. | This Monday, the BBC revealed that Emad Al Swealmeen, who authored a bombing at a Liverpool hospital last November of which he was the only victim, had twice been denied asylum in the UK, in 2014 and again in 2020. On the same day, UNHCR announced the completion of a pilot program to evaluate the viability of processing asylum rejection appeals without detaining asylum seeking women, mere weeks after the Home Office opened a detention center in Derwentside to hold asylum seeking women facing rejection and possible repatriation.

Med5 border control
Last Wednesday, Europol announced that a joint operation between Albanian, Greek, and Italian police had let to the arrests of 30 individuals operating a smuggling ring offering irregular passage from Turkey to EU soil aboard yachts. | On Friday, efsyn relayed an appeal for assistance from 29 asylum seekers stranded on an islet on the Greek side of the Evros river, just inside of its border with Turkey, in increasing distress on their third day unable to continue across the river and neglected by rescuers on either bank. | On Sunday, efsyn further reported that the group of 29 remained stranded on the islet as snow had begun falling over Thrace, and that, following contact with the group, Greek police had refused to initiate a rescue and instead instructed the 29 asylum seekers to return to Turkey by their own means.

Displacement along Russia’s periphery
Last Wednesday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleskii Reznikov warned that a conventional war with Russia could push between 3 and 5 million novel refugees into Europe. | This Monday, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced that IDP families housed in 200 substandard flats in the converted Kartli sanatorium would be provided alternative housing by the end of year.

Sources: AP, Forbes, euobserver, the Guardian, Brussels Times, BBC, InfoMigrants, efsyn, Forbes, Agenda.ge.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Mexican authorities located the remains of a 7-year old child who drowned in the Rio Grande in a tragic attempt to reach U.S. soil. | On Wednesday, the DC Court of Appeals heard arguments on a lawsuit initiated by the ACLU intending to terminate the use of Title 42, a public health rule deployed by the preceding Administration to foreclose access to the U.S. asylum system and kept in place by the Biden Administration. | On Friday, the Texas Tribune reported a brewing legal battle between Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s administration, and immigration advocates seizing on a judge’s ruling on the unconstitutionality of Operation Lone Star to try to invalidate the detentions of 450 asylum seekers currently held on questionable trespassing charges.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Wednesday, Mexican authorities detained 388 asylum seekers trying to cross the state of Veracruz hiding in the containers of truck trailer and on a minibus. | On Thursday, a caravan composed of 500 asylum seekers departed from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, hoping to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. | On Friday, authorities in Panama disclosed that, over 2021, they had repatriated nearly 6.600 irregular migrants to their countries of origin. | On Saturday, Colombian authorities reported that they had registered nearly 107.000 asylum seeker arrivals through 2021, most of them Haitians transiting toward North America via Panama, adding that they expected similar figures this coming year. | On Sunday, Colombian officials announced they intended to issue 70.000 Temporary Protection Permits this next week, and were planning further mass TPP issuances in other major cities in February.

Sources: Reuters, CNN, the Texas Tribune, Deutsche-Welle, EFE, Radio Panamá, el Colombiano, Radio Caracol.

Oceania

Australian refugee resettlement policy
Last Friday, an Australian court requested a coroner’s investigation of the death of Sudanese asylum seeker Faysal Ishak Ahmed in Manus Island, to determine whether there were preventable delays in his medical evacuation to hospital in Australia following a traumatic fall in December 2016. On the same day, Australian authorities committed to prioritize the resettlement of 15.000 Afghan refugees over the next 4 years, shortly after a Senate committee issued a scathing report blasting the abandonment of thousands of former collaborators upon Australia’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last August. | On Saturday, advocates blasted the Immigration Department’s commitment to resettling 15.000 Afghan refugees over 4 years, lamenting that it fell far short of the Home Affairs Department’s target of 145.000 arrivals or the Afghanistan-Australia Advocacy Network’s demand for 20.000 arrivals within 2022.

Sources: NCA, al Jazeera, the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mixed Migration—hebdo