Sir, – As the news comes that the LÉ Eithne has yet again rescued hundreds of people from flimsy boats in the Mediterranean ("LÉ Eithne rescues 593 migrants off coast of Libya," June 29th) we can congratulate the Defence Forces for their role in this humanitarian crisis.
This news comes in a week that Irish aid agencies, Ministers and academics meet in Dublin to discuss international humanitarian relief. In recent times, the lines between military action and independent humanitarian relief have started to blur.
In principle, the use of military hardware and personnel in relief efforts is welcome but the military’s methods can have unintended consequences, just like their presence can distort perception of whose interest the relief effort is representing. Funds channelled to the military are often taken from the limited budgets for international aid.
In the Mediterranean, the deployment of the military also reflects another problem: the fact that EU leaders continue to treat the refugee crisis as a security issue caused by the criminal activities of traffickers. In reality, this is a humanitarian crisis representing the tip of an iceberg made up of conflict and failing states, but also of failing international politics.
The inability or unwillingness of the international community to address conflicts such as those in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Libya is driving people away from their homes.
EU policies have made it virtually impossible for refugees to enter the EU by other routes, leaving only the dangerous sea route as an option for people fleeing their own countries.
We must push for urgent political solutions to conflicts across Africa and the Middle East; open realistic legal and safe channels of migration into the EU, and invest in international development cooperation promoting decent work and social protection so that for millions of people migration becomes an option not a necessity. – Yours, etc, HANS ZOMER Director, Dóchas, Lr Baggot St, Dublin 2. Sir, – Fintan O'Toole ("Us and them – the two faces of migration," June 27th) is right to note that "the refugee crisis has to be understood as a symptom, not a disease".
The current scale of global forced displacement reflects the troubling failure to ensure effective implementation of many existing human rights guarantees around the world.
Persecution, serious human rights violations, armed conflicts, extreme poverty, and crushing inequality persist in a world crammed with human rights standards and a multiplicity of institutions.
We must insist on the human right to seek asylum in Europe, and defend the fragile refugee protection system.
We must work to enhance rights regimes everywhere. The courageous, tireless and selfless struggles of human rights activists should be celebrated and affirmed.
Challenging questions must now also be asked.
Why has the international human rights movement lost its critical edge? What is working, and what has gone wrong? Which struggles succeed and which fail?
If we are serious about tackling the root causes of forced displacement, we must respond to the lessons learned and advance credible options for a new, and ethically informed, global human rights “revolution”. – Yours, etc, COLIN HARVEY School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast.