CIAO DATE: 05/2008
March 2008
Danish Institute for International Studies
This
paper starts from the encounter between a European navy vessel and a
dinghy carrying boat refugees and other desperate migrants across the
Mediterranean or West African Sea towards Europe. It explores the
growing trend in the EU of enacting migration control at the high seas
or international waters – so-called interdiction. It is argued that
these forms of extraterritorial migra-tion control aim at reconquering
the efficiency of the sovereign function to control migration, by
trying to either deconstruct or shift correlate obligations vis-à-vis
refugees and other persecuted persons to third States. In both
instances, European States are entering into a sovereignty game, in
which creative strategies are developed in order to reassert sovereign
power unconstrained by national and international obligations.
Starting
from an analysis of the refugee regime itself, the paper looks at the
possibilities for as-serting human rights extraterritorially, on the
high seas, in foreign territorial waters and in relation to situations
defined as search and rescue missions. On the basis of this, two
interrelated dynamics emerge.
The first concerns the legal debate surrounding the criteria for
establishing extra-territorial jurisdiction. The so far restrictive
interpretations applied provide a context for States to deconstruct
protection responsibilities towards refugees by moving migration
control outside their sovereign territory and into that of a foreign
State. The second dynamic is what could be termed a growing
commercialisation of sovereignty for the purpose of migration control.
By negotiating access to foreign territorial waters or simply outsource
the function of migration control to e.g. North and West African
countries, European States are exploiting territorial principles of
international law to shift and reduce refugee responsibilities.
Resource link: The refugee, the sovereign and the sea : EU interdiction policies in the Mediterranean [PDF] - 339K