Ms Frauke Ossig:

I thank the committee for its interest in our programmes. It is very much appreciated.

I will speak about the most recent programme I was involved in, from last year until the beginning of this year. I have been working in the last year in three different migration contexts. My year started with a refugee project we had in Sudan for the people who had to flee from the Tigray region in Ethiopia. I then moved on and spent time in our Mediterranean mission where we have, as Ms Simpson mentioned, the MV Geo Barents, in the Mediterranean Sea to save lives at sea. I spent the past two months in Poland and Lithuania for our response to the humanitarian crisis. We see it as a humanitarian crisis, and not, as the media likes to title it, a migration crisis, in the area of Belarus bordering Poland and Lithuania.

We had a team arrive in Lithuania in September last year. In October, we had an emergency team arrive in Poland. In October, we sent additional teams into Belarus, where we have a stable project which has already been working for a couple of years and is concentrating on tuberculosis. Our intention, as with most of the projects, was to reach out to the people most in need of humanitarian assistance. From our perspective, this was very clearly the population that is caught between border guards on the Belarusian side and the European border guards on the Polish and Lithuanian side.

What is happening is that the people who cross into Poland and Lithuania are either directly pushed back and blocked from entering Poland or Lithuania or, once they have entered, they are taken by the border guards to the border posts where, on the Polish side, for example, they are issued a letter to leave Poland without any possibility of applying for international protection or asylum. With this letter, they are then put back in the vehicles of the European border guards - in this case, Polish border guards - driven back to the border and pushed back across the border fence, a razor-wire fence that has been erected in both countries. This is happening on both sides.

A few people who manage, under unclear and arbitrary criteria, to hand in a request for asylum in Poland or Lithuania are then automatically detained. Both the push-backs and the detention are based on changes in the national legislation that Lithuania and Poland have been putting in place, successively. They first put in place a state of emergency and have made changes in national legislation since July. In the beginning, they used Covid very much as a justification to prevent people from applying for asylum. Later, however, a state of emergency was established in both countries.

In 2021, we saw more than 35,000 push-backs in Poland. That does not mean 35,000 people because we also know that many people have tried more than once to enter Poland and, in a kind of ping-pong process, they have been pushed back by border guards on both sides. After the push-back to Belarus, they have not been able to return to Minsk where they originally came from as they have been blocked by Belarusian border guards and pushed across the border again into Poland or Lithuania. We have seen more than 8,000 push-backs in Lithuania. By the way, in 2021, we also saw more than 30,000 push-backs in the Mediterranean Sea.

What is happening is that these people are remaining in the forest area between the border guards, out of fear of being pushed back into the violence they have experienced on all three countries' sides of the border. The border guards in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus are reportedly using violence against the migrants, the people on the move, during the push-backs. While we have seen it more on the Polish and Lithuanian sides in July, August and September, since October-November we have been seeing an increase in the violence the Belarusian border guards are using, leading people in the forest to be afraid to come out and call for help because they will not have access to unconditional humanitarian assistance.

The border areas are cut off by the state of emergency. Humanitarian organisations are not allowed to enter. People remain in the forest in below-zero temperatures, without food and access to water and medical care because they know they will not get unconditional access or any right to apply for asylum or international protection when they report to the border guards. This has been our struggle, which is one of the reasons we had to take the decision to withdraw our team from Poland. The majority of the people, or the people in most need who are caught between the border guards, were not reachable for us.

From our perspective, this is another example of very reckless European border policies that are working with deterrence and disrespecting and violating people's rights while on the move. People must have a clear legal way to request international protection. They must have access to asylum procedures. They must have access to legal assistance, which is not the case even after they have handed in their application for asylum. As such, they will not have access to a lawyer and the legal assistance that should, by law, be provided to them.

The European Union has been quiet on the limitations of access, although this is happening on European borders and European border guards are driving people back, including sick children, into the forest in snow and freezing conditions.

Finally, the European Commission in December proposed an interim measures catalogue, which we assume is going to be voted on at the beginning of March. From our perspective, it is a dangerous precedent for migration policy in Europe. It will take away rights from people on the move and will no longer guarantee the most vulnerable have access to protection. It will keep people in conditions that are absolutely unacceptable, with lengthy detentions, and will legitimise violations of European asylum law.