1.

Defend or refute the following statement:

The Member States of European Union should be held accountable for the breach of
human rights following the death of thousands of immigrants on the Mediterranean Sea
over the last eighteen months.
Your paper should present a hypothesis, which you should go on to support looking at the
international and European legislation (and immigration policies) and legal remedies
available.

Hypotesis: The international community as whole has a role to play in

addressing global migration challenges and refugee crises, including the crisis
currently affecting EU. This is why, the EU, its institutions, and its member state
have specific legal obligations to individuals on its territory and at its land and sea
borders. Governments should embrace the human rights and protection imperatives
at the core of the crisis and respond in accordance with the fundamental values at
the heart of the Unions aquis communitaire.
Migration cannot be stopped, without massively violating the human rights
of the migrants. It may be deflected and reroutex for a time. But European efforts
to stop irregular migration will fail on a massive scale given the push and pull
factors at work, such as survival needs on the part of the European countries.
Fighting the smugglers in isolation is useless, the irregular migration market is
created by barriers to mobility. As for many other social issues, prohibition is part
of the solution. People need to move and mobility services are being offered by
certain bodies. It would be a lot more efficient and less costly to organize mobility
than try resisting it.
Migrants and asylum seekers have been crossing the Mediterranean for
decades. The numbers have fluctuated over the years due to a variety of factors,
including conditions in countries of origin and transit, geopolitical developments,
and the EU policies. According to the UN refugee Agency UNHCR, 178 814
crossed the Mediterranean in first four months of 2016, out of which 728 were

declared dead of missing, and 1015078 immigrants and asylum seekers crossed the
sea in 2015.
Irregular migration is largely a product of the late 20 th century, reflecting the
desire of certain states to impose their order on the movement of people across
borders. Irregular migrations is, currently at least, little represented in international
law. The irregular migrant, like the regular migrant, is not defined by international
law other than by reference to his or her common humanity. Nor does international
law prescribe what states shall do (opposed to what they may not do), when
confronting this product of their own idiosyncratic view of the migrant on the
move. More particularly, there is a solid legal framework governing the actions of
states in and outside their territory which is not supplanted by the fact that control
of migration- the core decisions about entry, residence and removal falls within
the sovereign competence of the state.
International law is always there, even though some states may seek to
displace it, to build the notion of irregular status into some sort of foundational
reason or excuse for denying to one particular group the rights to which we are all
entitled by virtue of our common humanity. A gap nonetheless remains between
acceptance of a human rights-based approach and the reality for todays migrants,
ant it will need to be bridged by the way of effective implementation of the
applicable law. The framework of international law and obligation implies more
than the passive avoidance of direct harm, and demands an active protection role
one in which responsible states are obliged to ensure that those over whom they do
or may be expected to exercise jurisdiction and control are effectively protected as
consequence.
EU governments, largely acting on proposals from the European Comission,
are taking or have pledged to take a number of laudable steps to address various
aspects of the refugee crisis. After some efforts to increase the focus on migrants
and asylum seekers inside the EU, the focus of many EU governments now
appears to have shifted decisively back to efforts aimed at preventing or

discouraging people from attempting to reach EU territory, tackling smuggling

networks, and rapidly deporting individuals who do not have a right to remain in
EU.
All Member States are party to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol
relating to the Status of Refugees, and all are bound by the same obligations and
the same legal understanding of the refugee. Given that they have all agreed to
treat refugees in the same way, to recognize the same rights and to accord the same
benefits, national refugee status determination systems are redundant. The EU
demands I am shortening the argument a simple European response, in which
Europes refugees enjoy a European asylum and European protection, and the
rights and benefits accorded by European law. Meanwhile, good policy, if not
strictly logic, argues equally for a common obligation based approach, not just to
refugee status determination but also to resettlement, rescue at sea and protection
at large. If the EU can sign treaties, then in theory it could replace individual
Member States as party to the regime of protection organized under the 1951
Convention and the 1967 Protocol; or if it does not replace them, it could exercise
their competences by way of delegation.
Despite widespread evidence of violations at the borders, EU institutions and
Member States have not taken effective steps to stop the abuses. At the same time,
the countries concerned continued to receive annual allocations of millions of
Euros from Internal Security Fund Borders and Visa Instrument to strengthen
border control without any conditional requirement to develop accountability
mechanisms to address abuses at borders. Instead. Redress has been sought
through European Court of Human Rights, which has proved an effective but
belated mechanism to bring an end to push-back policies.
From a refugee protection perspective, greater access to ways to legally
enter Europe would prevent people who have fled persecution and conflict from
abuses by smugglers en route and by government officials at borders, and would
significantly reduce the loss of life each year. Creating more legal entry channels

including for Syrians currently the majority of those entering Europe as refugees
could allievate much of the current crisis. It could also enable better management
of entry and movement and could serve as a pilot for other nationalities.
This can be done in multiple ways, including by ensuring that protectionsensitive entry systems are in place- measures whereby officials protecting EU
borders are able to identify people who may be in need of international protection
and grant them entry in order to access the asylum system. Greater use could also
be made of embassy processing in countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan
to issue Humanitarian visas or visas for family reunification to permit migrants to
travel to specific EU countries and seek protection there (although embassies will
require extra capacity to process larger numbers).
If those intercepted or rescued at sea are not disembarked in European space,
then effective, open and internationally supervised agreements will be essential to
ensure their landing and accommodation in a place of safety, their treatment and
protection in accordance with the applicable international and European standards,
and solution appropriate to individual circumstances, such as asylum,
resettlements, facilitated third-country migration or return in safety and dignity
countries, asylum seekers and migrants in sub-optimal conditions ought never been
on Europes agenda.
Precedents for both exist. For example, both Ireland and Switzerland
launched family reunification programs for Syrians in 2013 with Irelands shortterm program granting visas to 111 people, while Swiss programme has granted
nearly 4700 visas as of November 2015. Improved access to family reunification
mechanisms for other nationalities is also needed. Precedents also exist for the
granting of humanitarian visas in 15 other EU states, including in France, which
has granted 1880 asylum visas for Syrians since 2012. Germany has also pledged
18500 places through an individual possibility of integration for refugees. Better
funding support for asylum systems will reduce states incentive to resort to
irregular and illegal practices at borders to keep asylum seekers out. What is

perhaps missing most is political leadership and frank dialogue among European
leaders about how best to respond to the needs of desperate people who will not be
deterred by more fences or abuses at the borders.
2.

Initially the legal qualification of the armed violence in

Syria was deemed to be a non-international armed conflict, although it

has also been referred to as potentially attaining the qualification of a
civil war.
Discuss to what extent the present situation in the Syrian conflict
constitutes a breach of international law.
Do you believe that international law can be used to support the
argument that international community is obliged to take action?

3.
Discuss the following statement:
International public law can only really become effective when its
enforcement mechanisms become stronger and State players are truly on
equal standing.