Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move:

“That Seanad Éireann:

recognises that: - seeking asylum is a fundamental right under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol;

- every person’s right to seek asylum in a safe country is enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; notes with concern that: - an estimated 27,000 people seeking refuge have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014;

- the estimated figures for those dead or missing are reported to be greatly underestimated;

- over the past decade the European Union has enacted policies which seek to prevent asylum seekers from reaching Europe’s borders and claiming asylum in Member States;

- the European Union has operationalised a number of migration control policies, such as the Malta Declaration, which fund non-EU states, such as Libya, to intercept people attempting to cross the Mediterranean and detain them;

- a number of objectives of the Malta Declaration have clearly failed, namely the ‘determination to act in full respect of human rights, international law and European values’ and to ‘to ensure adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants’;

- conditions experienced by refugees at external borders funded by the European Union, including in detention centres in Libya and Greece, represent a fundamental violation of human rights and are a cause of suffering for those seeking safety;

- the European Commission, this year, has proposed a new migration deal with Tunisia which would commit €105 million to the Tunisian Government for migration control;

- illegal pushbacks of people seeking asylum have been reported at Europe’s borders, with one estimate from Belgian NGO 11.11.11 reporting at least 225,533 pushbacks had taken place in 2022;

- reports have emerged from the European Anti-Fraud Office and Amnesty International regarding the complicity of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, in such pushbacks;

- in 2022, due to such reports alongside wider issues with Frontex organisation, the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee voted not to discharge Frontex’s 2020 budget;

- the recently negotiated European Union Pact on Migration and Asylum seeks to transfer more responsibility to countries outside the European Union and to further harden Europe’s borders;

- although 85% of the world’s refugee population are living outside Europe, with 76% in low and middle-income countries, a number of European Union Member States are committed to preventing people seeking asylum from reaching Europe; regrets that: - European Union Member States, including Ireland, have moved from search and rescue missions to surveillance missions;

- the Irish Government in 2017 entered the EU Operation Sophia which resulted in the redeployment of Irish Naval Service vessels from primarily humanitarian search and rescue operations to primarily security and interception operations;

- the number of people rescued by the Irish Naval Service fell from 8,592 in 2015 to 1,888 in 2018 after the change in policy regarding search and rescue;

- Operation Sophia completely ceased search and rescue operations in 2019;

- Operation Irini, which replaced Operation Sophia, does not have a search and rescue mandate;

- across Europe, civil society organisations and activists who are engaging in search and rescue missions are increasingly criminalised for engaging in life-saving humanitarian work;

- the principles of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity, stated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to be founding values of the Union, are being undermined by increasingly hostile migration control policies which do not reflect those founding values and which breach European and international law; further notes: - Article 78 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrine the right to seek asylum;

- Article 4 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits collective expulsions;

- the 2021 Report from Amnesty International, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and Human Rights Watch entitled ‘Plan of Action: Twenty Steps to Protect People on the Move Along the Central Mediterranean Route’; calls on the Government to: - enter negotiations for bilateral agreements which would allow the Irish Naval Service to resume search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean;

- provide, in the short-term, logistical and financial support to civil society groups engaging in humanitarian missions in the Mediterranean;

- engage with colleagues in the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to amend Operation Irini and include a firm search and rescue mandate;

- urge colleagues in the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to carry out a review of European Union migration policy which focuses on compliance with European and international law, with a particular emphasis on human rights law, in third countries at the external European land and sea borders;

- seek in the final negotiations on the European Union Pact on Migration and Asylum to ensure that responsibility for persons seeking asylum is not further abrogated to third countries but is embraced as a responsibility of European Union Member States;

- engage with fellow European Union Member States and third countries to ensure the provision of safe routes for persons seeking asylum in Europe;

- work with European Union colleagues to ensure that rule of law is upheld and that illegal pushbacks are stopped;

- advocate with the European Commission and colleagues on the Council of the European Union for an independent inquiry into the role of Frontex in illegal pushbacks of persons seeking asylum;

- work with the European Commission and colleagues on the Council of the European Union to implement the 2021 Report from Amnesty International, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and Human Rights Watch entitled ‘Plan of Action: Twenty Steps to Protect People on the Move Along the Central Mediterranean Route’; calls on the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to: - end the policies which seek to harden Europe’s external borders and place persons seeking asylum in detention conditions in third countries which violate their human rights;

- urgently revise the European Union Pact on Migration and Asylum to ensure that the collective European response to persons seeking asylum in Europe is founded on the principles of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union;

- cease funding to third countries given for the purposes of detaining persons seeking asylum and stopping them from reaching Europe;

- urgently review the conditions in detention centres in third countries which are in receipt of European Union funding for migration control;

- ensure safe routes for persons seeking asylum which support the rights of those persons to seek asylum in European Union Member States;

- revise Operation Irini to include a search and rescue mandate;

- establish an independent inquiry into the role of Frontex in illegal pushbacks of persons seeking asylum;

- implement the 2021 Report from Amnesty International, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and Human Rights Watch entitled ‘Plan of Action: Twenty Steps to Protect People on the Move Along the Central Mediterranean Route’.”