Ireland among states with ‘disappointing’ migrant response

Ireland is among those EU member states which have had a “disappointing” reaction to the refugee crisis, the director of a major human rights agency has said.

Galway native Prof Michael O’Flaherty, who last year was appointed director of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, said it would be easy for him to “have a shot at Ireland” and say it could do better, but it would not be right.

“With the exception of a small handful of countries that have been incredibly generous, Germany, Sweden, Austria, and of course Greece and Italy who have had no option, the reactions have been disappointing most everywhere.”

He said the whole of Europe needed to do a better job of sharing responsibility for refugees. Speaking to The Irish Times during a visit to Ireland, the head of the Vienna-based body said he was not talking about the EU or European governments, but about European society.

“European society seems to be willing to let Greece and Italy work this out even though it is an impossible burden [for the two countries].”

He said the current focus was on Calais but there were a dozen other such camps, notably in Greece but also in Italy, where the situation was equally dramatic from a human rights perspective.

Resource problems

The situation in the camps has improved in relation to such issues as child protection, the provision of information, and sensibility to sexual abuse, but there were still resource problems in such areas as specialist care for people suffering from trauma.

A huge number of unaccompanied minors had gone missing, with Europol putting the figure at 10,000 but many others believing the true figure was higher. “A huge number of children are lost in Europe.”

There was not enough interest in EU states in taking in children, especially adolescent boys. “These kids need a home to grow up in.”

There were shocking stories coming out all the time of “Nazi salutes on the streets and swastikas being painted on the walls of buildings housing migrants. In one village in a central European country, posters went up one night saying ‘you are not welcome here, go home’.”

He was also “disturbed at the extent to which political leaders in some countries are stoking a populism which is deeply disappointing but also dangerous.”

‘Appalled’

However, when he travelled to these countries and spoke to the people, they are “appalled at their own leadership”. He added: “It is important not to conflate the views of the political leaders with those of the society.”

Prof O’Flaherty said the people of the Greek island of Lesbos had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the generosity with which they had responded to the arrival of migrants. It was his experience that people responded generously when they encountered human suffering.

He said the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU would be bad for the issue of human rights. “We would miss them terribly,” he said. “The UK does an awful lot right when it comes to human rights.”

The UK was regularly used by his agency as an example of how human rights policies could be effectively implemented. He gave as an example the issue of hate crime and how the UK police has an embedded practice to treating it seriously and pursuing suspected instances in an effective way.