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Following @ECHR_CEDH ruling in Hirsi, EU and its Member States developed new #pushback strategies to continue forcing asylum seekers and other migrants outside the European space, without an individual assessment of their int’l protection & human rights claims (Thread)
@UNSR_Migration's forthcoming report will focus on pushback practices & their impact on human rights of migrants. GLAN & @IrishCentreHR have made a joint submission to the UNSR focusing on emerging pushback patterns in the Mediterranean & Aegean Seas https://www.glanlaw.org/single-post/glan-ihrc-submission-on-european-pushbacks-submitted-to-un-special-rapporteur-on-rights-of-migrants
1. #EULibya cooperation: the EU, directly and through its Member States, allocated development funds without conducting human rights impact assessment and monitoring. Mismanagement of funds created circumstances where illegal pushback practices flourished https://bit.ly/39tOmbI
2. EU and Italian funding & support are so extensive that @CoastGuardLIBYA would not be able to exist nor function without it. Because of this dependence, Italy can be found to be exercising jurisdiction, and thus to be implicated in LYCG illegal pushbacks https://bit.ly/3ovWIUj
3. There’s a causal link between shrinking space for solidarity with migrants and conditions conducive to constructive refoulement. #Criminalisation of SAR NGOs results in ousting of humanitarian actors from sea: migrants are rendered ‘rightless’ and exposed to preventable abuses
4. In a pattern of pushbacks widely documented across the #Aegean since March 2020, asylum-seekers attempting to apply for protection in Greece are taken on @HCoastGuard vessels, forced onto inflatable, non-navigable life-rafts and left to drift at sea
5. Greek pushbacks across the #Evros River often begin with racial profiling: police stop based on looks/nationality, arrest & detain, then expel into Turkey at night. Even those with EU refugee status aren't spared from this racial discrimination https://bit.ly/2YtYWcq
6. As we told @UN HRComm in November 2020, pushbacks can constitute enforced disappearances. Held incommunicado, removed from protection of the law, truth denied. It’s what happened to Fady: disappeared by #Greece while searching for missing 11y/o brother https://bit.ly/36u8310
7. Reliance on constructive refoulement & interdiction by omission leaves private merchant ships among few actors able to intervene in case of distress at sea. Private vessels can become rescuers or be strategically mobilised for interdiction & refoulement https://bit.ly/3pyZ06E
8. EU & MS aerial assets systematically used for early detection of migrants’ boats. No rescue performed, info used to enable LYCG interceptions, disregarding concerns that this facilitates refoulement, impedes access to asylum & exposes migrants to abuses https://bit.ly/36mrzg3
