As Pope Francis visits Lesbos, refugee and displacement crises are not going to go away

Matthew Carter is CAFOD’s Humanitarian Director. On the eve of the Pope’s visit to Lesbos, Greece, he shares his concerns about the refugee agreement the EU recently signed with Turkey.

Waleed, his wife and 4-year-old son borrowed money to make the journey. The short sea crossing cost them $1,850 and they shared their journey with 70 other people. Half way through, the boat started to rock very dangerously in the sea. Everyone was crying. They were picked up by the Greek police who rescued them and took them to Lesbos where they were staying at the Caritas Greece run accommodation centre before continuing their onward journey to Western Europe.

This is Waleed’s story, but you will have seen, read and heard many just like his. In 2015, more than 850,000 people made the perilous journey across the water from Turkey to Greece. Waleed and thousands more were fleeing the brutal conflict in Syria. In the UK, images of dramatic boat rescues and life-jacket littered beaches filled our screens, accompanied by huge outpourings of compassion and generosity.

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But over the past few months we have seen attitudes harden and borders slam shut. Today, more than 51,000 people are stranded in Greece, staying in hastily built camps across the country, unable to continue their journey along the ‘Balkan route’. Over 13,000 refugees are stranded on the Greek-Macedonian border at Idomeni, living in dire conditions on a muddy wasteland, their route to northern Europe now closed.

Pope Francis’ visit

On Saturday 16 April, Pope Francis will travel to the Greek island of Lesbos. He will meet with refugees and migrants who have made the same treacherous sea journey as Waleed and his family.

The papal visit comes at a difficult moment for refugees because, in an attempt to halt the number of people arriving on European shores, the EU has signed a deal with Turkey in which all ‘irregular migrants’ arriving in Greece will be returned to Turkey. For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the EU. As an incentive, Turkey will receive increased financial support, early visa-free travel and progress in EU membership negotiations.

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Consider this alternative narrative. Waleed, his wife and 4-year-old-son make the dangerous journey to Lesbos by sea. They are picked up by the Greek police before being taken to a closed detention centre run by the police and informed they could either claim asylum in Greece or be returned back to Turkey.

If Waleed was travelling now his journey would be halted at the edge of Europe. Since midnight on 20 March 2016, anyone arriving on the Greek islands by boat is transferred to a closed detention centre where they can either apply for asylum or await return to Turkey. Conditions inside the detention centres are poor and in some cases do not meet humanitarian standards. Many look like prisons, surrounded by barbed wire.

Changes in Lesbos

Moria camp is one of these hotspot centres on Lesbos. Our partner Caritas Greece had been distributing aid to refugees at Moria camp, but since the agreement, it has been converted from a registration camp into a detention centre. All NGOs and UN agencies have had to leave.

The agreement has now divided the refugees in Greece into two distinct groups – those who arrived before 20 March who are on mainland Greece, and those who are being forcibly held on the Greek islands. Regardless of nationality and need for international protection, this latter group are subject to possible deportation back to Turkey after a fast-tracked asylum process. Meanwhile many refugees and migrants on the mainland are likely to seek to continue their journey by irregular and more dangerous means, unless they receive reassurance that both asylum and decent accommodation will soon be available to them.

The Turkey agreement sets an uneasy precedent for the response to refugee crises, as vulnerable human beings are traded for political benefits. The definition of an ‘irregular migrant’ is open to interpretation and many human rights agencies argue the deal may deny people the right to access asylum procedures and the right to fair treatment. There are concerns about the lack of safeguards in Turkey to prevent forced returns to Syria and other conflict zones which could be deemed in breach of refugee law. More broadly, there are fears that the deal will result in increased smuggling and alternative, less secure, migration routes.

As the first people are returned to Turkey and the dramatic boat journeys to Greek islands have been replaced by images of orderly ferry boats, the impact of the Turkey agreement on refugee flows remains to be seen. It may provide a short term solution to Europe’s refugee crisis, but Europe is just one part of the world and this is just one part of a global displacement crisis.

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The plight of refugees worldwide

There are currently 60 million people in the world who have been displaced by persecution, war, conflict or disaster. According to UNHCR, since January 19,340 people have arrived by sea into Italy, and more than 38,000 people have travelled from South Sudan to Sudan.

Refugee and displacement crises are not going to go away. It is important that the ‘European crisis’ is not seen in isolation, that the EU-Turkey agreement does not stop people from looking at the root causes of the problem and does not undermine the Principles and legal obligations enshrined in the Refugee Convention. But most of all, we must not become cynical of the plight of people like Waleed and his family.

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