Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 11, after line 40, to insert the following:

“International protection in respect of smuggled persons

11.A person who has been the object of people smuggling and subsequently sought international protection may not be transferred or deported to either a state of origin or a state including protocol states and states which have entered into agreements with the European Union in respect of migration, where the human rights of that person, including rights under the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, are not fully protected.”.

Amendment No. 15 refers to the international protections of the person who is the object of people smuggling. It is around non-refoulement but it is a little bit wider than that. This is, therefore, to ensure that there would be measures to ensure that, " a person who has been the object of people smuggling and [...] sought international protection may not be transferred or deported to either a state of origin or a state including protocol states and states which have entered into agreements with the European Union in respect of migration".

I want to clarify that I will be proposing a different version of this on Report Stage. I believe the requirement that persons would have to have sought international protection is perhaps even too high a bar because that implies that somebody has already entered into a system. My real concern is for persons in a much more immediate sense, not those who have necessarily subsequently sought international protection. Any person who is an object of people smuggling and who comes into the care of the State in whatever shape or form, whether he or she has gone through the process of applying for international protection, should not be transferred or deported either to a state of origin or a state including protocol states. We know there are states which are party to the protocols being addressed here but they are not necessarily currently upholding or can be guaranteed to uphold the human rights of a person under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. This is, therefore, my concern.

We know there were situations that relate to ships. I am talking about the Mediterranean because Irish ships are covered by the provisions of this Bill. We have, however, heard stories of persons who have been taken from the Mediterranean and transferred back to the Libyan coastguard, for example, rather than the issue being addressed and those people being supported by the country, taken to a European country or treated under the laws of the ship by which they may have been rescued. We know people have been transferred to Libya. We know very strongly the extraordinary human rights abuses that have unfortunately taken place in Libya. This is a whole area we cannot fully unpack now but I believe 11 migration control agreements in total were put in place following the migrant crisis we had previously in Syria back in 2015 and 2016. We have seen European money, in some cases, funding situations of human rights abuse and situations in which persons' human rights and their rights under the convention are not being accessed. We have seen that in Sudan and Libya, and some would believe we have also seen it in Turkey in some instances.

Unfortunately, we have also seen that there may be European Union states to which it is not safe to move people back, where their rights will not be fully protected or where they will not be able to access their rights under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. There are states with which the European Union has a migration agreement. Then there are protocol states, which is a little but wider than the European Union. However, those states are part of the protocol but not part of the European Union.

This amendment should in fact probably be stronger. I have placed it in terms of where international protection is filed and I think that is very clear. Perhaps, however, to be really crystal clear, I am going to try to strengthen it on Report Stage to say we should not have a situation whereby persons who have been smuggled are being transferred into any situation in which their human rights, and their rights under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, are not guaranteed or protected. We should not be complicit in that in any way.

I am sorry that the amendment is not as perfectly worded as I wanted. It is a sad reality that we saw a media blackout in Poland whereby they enforced a state of emergency which said that no media or, indeed, NGOs would be allowed into a 3 km space around the border. We do not, therefore, know what is happening exactly in some cases. That is why I want to copper-fasten it here.