Clandestine migration from the south of the Mediterranean into Europe
Recommendation 1449
(2000)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 28 January 2000 (8th Sitting) (see Doc. 8599, report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography, rapporteur: Mrs Guirado). Textadopted by the Assembly on 28 January 2000 (8thSitting)
- Thesaurus
1. The Parliamentary Assembly is deeply concerned
at the number of victims of clandestine migration in the Mediterranean and by
the extremely dangerous and inhuman conditions in which clandestine migrants, a
large number of whom are women and minors, find themselves every day.
2. The Assembly notes the absence of exact figures and a shortage of
reliable studies concerning clandestine migration from the south of the
Mediterranean into Europe.
3. The Assembly believes that living under clandestine conditions invariably
deprives people of their fundamental and social rights and their human dignity
and exposes them to insecure living conditions for as long as they remain
clandestine.
4. The Assembly recalls that emigration is a fundamental human right.
5. The Assembly considers that the complex problems caused by clandestine
migration into and within the Council of Europe’s member states require urgent
solutions to which the Organisation can and must contribute in an active and
specific manner.
6. The Assembly is convinced that this phenomenon, which is particularly
pronounced in the Mediterranean, cannot be remedied without open and innovative
dialogue and lasting co-operation between the countries on its northern and
southern shores, and that the ever closer involvement in the Assembly’s work of
the states on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, such as Morocco, would
be a decisive step in the battle against the true causes of clandestine
migration.
7. The Assembly acknowledges that clandestine migration is not restricted to
the Strait of Gibraltar alone and that illegal migrants also come from regions
other than North Africa, in particular eastern Europe, South America and
sub-Saharan Africa.
9. The Assembly considers that promoting mobility and free circulation of
people in Europe on the one hand and stepping up border controls on the other
is somewhat contradictory and counter-productive for co-operation in the
Mediterranean Basin.
10. The Assembly is convinced that the restrictions on lawful migration
actually increase the likelihood of people entering Europe illegally and
strengthen the image of a Fortress Europe, and that clandestine migration in
the Mediterranean has increased since the early 1990s, suggesting that the
action taken to date has been of limited effect.
11. The Assembly notes that these measures are an ever stronger incentive to
those who exploit the hopes of others in what is in fact a cruel traffic in
human beings, using increasingly sophisticated and inhuman means to make money
out of clandestine migration.
12. The Assembly is alarmed at the increasing number of women, minors and
other vulnerable persons among clandestine passengers.
13. The Assembly considers that restrictions of this kind have no
humanitarian foundation and that the groups they hit worst are those most in
need of practical solutions to the hardship and inequalities and development
differentials they experience daily in their countries south of the
Mediterranean.
14. The Assembly therefore recommends that the Committee of Ministers:
14.1 invite the Spanish authorities to set up a
permanent migration monitor in southern Spain (the most sensitive point of
entry for Mediterranean-Europe emigration) in conjunction with the Council of
Europe. Its chief objective would be to analyse the intrinsic dynamics of
clandestine migration and the outlook for migration movements across the
Mediterranean, and to conduct research into the number of clandestine migration
victims as well as the causes and effects of clandestine migration in the
Mediterranean and the impact and practices of trafficking in human beings and
organised crime in the region;
14.2 establish or step up
dialogue with the competent authorities, ministries and non-governmental
organisations on the southern shores of the Mediterranean with a view to
implementing on-going co-operation on the economic, political and sociological
causes of the problem;
14.3 make this co-operation a reality,
involving the International Organization for Migration (IOM), through new joint
approaches to such sensitive issues as:
a the
possibility of temporary or seasonal work for migrants;
b the
role of consulates in the implementation of visa policies;
c the readmittance of clandestine migrants;
d police
co-operation between the two shores of the Mediterranean;
e the role of third party states and states of
destination;
14.4 support the corresponding
policies of decentralised co-operation, as promoted by the Congress of Local
and Regional Authorities of Europe;
14.5 support the "trans-Med", programme of the Council of Europe’s
North-South Centre in the fields of awareness-raising, information on the
social and cultural phenomena linked to immigration and the role migrants can
play in co-operation and development in both the country of arrival and the
country of origin;
14.6 promote, in co-operation with the IOM, notably in the framework of
its strategy on the western Mediterranean, an education and information policy
on clandestine migration, both north and south of the Mediterranean;
14.7 consider the possibilities, at a forthcoming quadripartite meeting,
of the MEDA programme financing projects and programmes designed to improve the
humanitarian situation of clandestine migrants in the Mediterranean;
14.8 invite the member states, particularly those on the northern shore of
the Mediterranean:
a to step up bilateral
co-operation with the southern shore of the Mediterranean in the field of
illegal migration;
b to set up independent structures to
receive clandestine migrants and ensure that their fundamental rights are
respected after their arrival;
14.9 invite the
receiving states to develop, in co-operation with non-governmental
organisations and local authorities, training and development aid programmes at
local level in the migrants’ countries of origin.
