World Refugee Day | The dignity of refugees is vulnerable

Heads of state and government from nine EU countries recently wrote a letter to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In it, they directly complained about its jurisprudence. The signatories believe that the Court's rulings restrict the ability to deport refugees or prevent them from entering the country. In doing so, they argue, it endangers nothing less than the security of society.

This direct disregard for the separation of powers is typical of our times and part of a general attack on the rights of those most in need of protection: those fleeing wars – from which Europe's arms industry profits – violence, and hardship. Only a few of them make it to Europe. Most of the 122 million people on the run, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), are internally displaced – almost 40 percent of them children and young people.

Yet the EU has been eroding the rights of refugees for years, deporting as many as possible of those who have made it to a member state, and demonstrably tolerating illegal pushbacks . Only in Sunday speeches is the suffering of these people remembered, often with images of emaciated children in tent camps in Africa. And on June 20, World Refugee Day, new data and reports on the extent of the disaster are published.

At the same time, flight and migration in the EU are being discussed as the "mother of all problems," as former German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer once put it. Asylum seekers are generally portrayed as potential criminals, violent offenders, terrorists, and thus as a threat to society – as was the case in the letter initiated by Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen, a Social Democrat, and her Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, a representative of a post-fascist party. Reason enough for them not only to interfere in the work of the judiciary, but also to demand an "adaptation" of the European Convention on Human Rights to supposed "requirements." After all, there was no "irregular mass migration" at the time the basic document was adopted.

"The EU is pursuing policies on the backs of refugee children."

Janneke Stein Save The Children

While the German government criticized the overreaching behavior toward the ECHR, there are many within the ranks of the governing parties who also believe that existing international human rights standards must be undermined. Or that EU law can simply be ignored, as in the case of the court-confirmed illegal rejections of asylum seekers at the German border.

At the EU level, meanwhile, the reform of the Common Asylum System (CEAS), which will come into force in a year, is putting the matter into action. Intensive work is underway to amend laws and guidelines to allow asylum seekers – including children – to be interned at the alliance's external borders and quickly deported from there. Furthermore, the question of how to outsource asylum procedures to so-called safe third countries and make it easier to deport people there is being examined. This is to be made permissible even if the people concerned have no connection to the country whatsoever. Currently, people may only be "transferred" to third countries if they have relatives there or have stayed there for an extended period. The EU Commission aims to ensure that in the future, they may be "transferred" to such countries even if they have only transited there briefly or if the deporting EU state has concluded a reception agreement with them. However, such agreements do not yet exist, and it remains to be seen whether such agreements – which are very expensive for the EU – will be concluded.

A report published on Wednesday by the international aid organization Save the Children shows that the EU's increasingly harsh stance against refugees is not sparing children. According to the report, they are exposed to "systematic abuse, detention, and other legal violations" at the union's external borders. With the entry into force of the GEAS reform, the situation could worsen further, said Janneke Stein, an expert on displacement and migration at Save the Children. In the report, children and young people describe their experiences of rejection, detention, violence, and intimidation.

"The European Union is pursuing policies on the backs of refugee children," said Janneke Stein. This violates fundamental European values. The measures planned under the Geas reform, i.e., asylum procedures at external borders or, in Germany, at airports, could further undermine children's rights to protection, and "child-specific reasons for flight" could be even more difficult to identify through expedited procedures. Stein cited the threat of female genital mutilation or forced recruitment as child soldiers as examples.