Migration & Inclusion

Our partner organization Border Violence Monitoring Network recently hosted a webinar titled 'Understanding the Pact: How the EU is Abolishing the Right to Asylum', which we were happy to support. In light of the complexity and intransparency of the reform process, this webinar not only provided much needed elaborations on the proposed changes to the Common European Asylum System, but also the potential implications these would have in different EU Member States. Given the pressure under which the current trilogue negotiations are held, in order to reach an agreement between the co-legislators, namely the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament, before Christmas, this webinar is a timely intervention to unpack the migration pact. Thanks to great speakers from Refugee Support Aegean, Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI), the University of Keele and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, who all are very experienced with regard to their respective context the webinar sheds light on the pact and its main regulations (Screening, Asylum Procedures, and the topic of ‘instrumentalisation’) and how their implementation would look like, given the realities in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Poland. Watch the webinar recording with links to the audio of live translations into Arabic, Turkish and BCS. Additionally, the Border Violence Monitoring Network published a short summary of the discussions in Arabic, Bulgarian, BCS , Farsi, French, Greek, Polish, Spanish and Turkish, on their website, here.

A crucial factor in shaping public narratives and opinions on refugees and migrants is the media. In order to better understand public perceptions and discourses along the so-called Balkan route, we commissioned three studies looking into the language and visuals used to report about migration and people on the move in different countries, namely Turkey, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia.

Despite differences, representations of people on the move are everywhere generalised, stripping them of their human traits and perceiving them as masses or numbers. The focus is more on national rather than human security, while various categories, such as children, women, LGBTQI+, or different nationalities, are often underrepresented. Most of the times the floor is not given to the people on the move themselves but instead others speak for and about them.

Based on these three e-papers we commissioned the organisation Media and Migration Association (MMA) to create three short videos that summarise the main findings of each study. This one is the compilation of all three aforementioned videos.

You can also watch the videos separately for each country:

The video for Turkey: https://youtu.be/fVd-EHGhzJc

The video for Greece: https://youtu.be/nzVnQ2ywQXg

The video for Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia: https://youtu.be/sFASUoRWsA4

Migration as well as solidarity with people on the move are increasingly treated as criminal acts in Europe. Criminalisation can come in various forms and with very different scopes and it is important that activists and organisations are aware of the existing options for action and defence. In order to better enable targeted Human Rights Defenders to do so, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung published the toolkit In defence of defenders: A practical guide to legal means and advocacy tools for criminalised Human Rights Defenders in Europe, authored by members of the Border Violence Monitoring Network. You may watch the recording of the launch event and the expert discussion with panelists Brian J. Dooley, Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Marta Gionco, Advocacy Officer Migration Policy at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), Hannah Neumann, Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA), Vice-Chair of the EP Subcommittee on Human Rights and David Yambio, Co-Founder and spokersperson of “Refugees in Libya” here. The event was hosted by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brussels-European Union Office, the toolkit was presented by Elena Beck, Criminalisation Focal Point at the Border Violence Monitoring Network, and the discussion was moderated by our very own Neda Noraie-Kia, Head of Migration Policy Europe, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Thessaloniki.

The video is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

It is not only the reluctant states, it is not only the insufficient and fragmented EU migration policy. There are also many places in Europe that defend the refugees' rights and operate an active policy of welcome. These at least 700 cities and communities now form a vast network, as from the end of October 2021 they have come together through the "Moving Cities" website. Offering a comprehensive mapping of communities and their migration philosophies across Europe, "Moving Cities" is a platform that makes civil-society initiatives for a different kind of migration policy more visible and inspires other cities to follow the examples already in place. To mark the launch of the website, its creators - namely the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation and the Seebrücke organisation - held an online event on 21 October 2021, which you can watch in the video.

"Bridges" is about bringing together different people on relevant questions on migration and asylum in Europe. "Bridges" thereby seeks to connect people whose paths would not necessarily cross otherwise and thereby create a conversation on timely topics of mutual interest.

In our second "Bridges" session we welcome Mrs. Nazifa Yusufi Bek, who is an elected member of the Afghan parliament and co-founder of the so called "Parliament in Exile" - a group of female Afghan parliamentarians who had to flee their country and who currently are in Athens. Of the former 69 female MPs of the Afghan parliament around 25 are currently in exile in Greece. They have found a network to be able to better raise awareness for the situation of their fellow Afghan people back home and to jointly express their political proposals and positions towards the international community. Together with Dr. Hannah Neumann, member of European Parliament and the peace and human rights spokesperson of "The Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA)" as well as vice-chair of the Human Rights Committee (DROI) -who had recently come to visit the network in Athens- this session will introduce the "Parliament in Exile" and shed a light on the situation of Afghanistan's women, inside the country, in transit or in exile and hereby look into the EU's potential role to support these brave women.

"Bridges" is a about bringing together different people on relevant questions on migration and asylum in Europe. "Bridges" thereby seeks to connect people who's paths would not necessarily cross otherwise and thereby create a conversation on timely topics of mutual interest.

In our first "Bridges" session we focus on the situation of Afghan people after the violent seizure of power of the Taliban in Afghanistan and ask whether and how Europe can and will provide protection for those who are forced to flee. Human Rights Activist Parwana Amiri, author of the recently published book "My pen won't break bur borders will", who fled to Greece with her Family in 2019 and since is residing in refugee camps, first in Moria on Lesbos and now in Camp Ritsona talks about her experiences as an Afghan refugee in Europe and expresses the fears and struggles of both, those who are still in the country as well as those who fled in search for protection. Stelios Kouloglou, is a Greek Member of European Parliament and of the Committee on Foreign Affairs on behalf of Syriza since 2015 and in this capacity works on issues of migration and asylum in Europe and Human Rights in particular.

Our Head of Migration Policy Europe, Neda Noraie-Kia, talked to the Greek Ombudsman, Mr. Andreas I. Pottakis, about his latest report on alleged pushbacks to Turkey of foreign nationals who had arrived in Greece in search for international protection. Mr. Pottakis provides an overview of his main findings and explains that the latest report is a preliminary one and that his own investigation is ongoing, looking at both areas, the Greek-Turkish land and maritime border. He furthermore raises serious concerns regarding the level of the protection of human rights in Greece and suggest investigation by the Greek police, but also EU policies in order to improve the transparency of the EU border and coast guard agency’s (FRONTEX).

Early March the Brussels office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung hosted an online discussion on the role of Frontex in the context of alleged pushbacks at the EU external borders and on potential consequences from legal, political and public authorities’ perspectives. The Greek Ombudsman joined this debate as panelist and expert. You can watch the whole discussion online here: https://tinyurl.com/n7werz8w