Freedom from Fear - Volume 2016, Issue 12, 2016

The ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe touches on fundamental issues of international law, criminal policy, criminology – and victimology. Public perception of and opinions on human trafficking, human smuggling and the situation of migrants in general is in a state of flux; perceptions and opinions are heavily influenced by media depictions and highly dependent on the general political climate of a society. Political, public and even academic debates are often polarizing events that are characterized by stereotyical arguments. In the course of such debates, distinct phenomena such as trafficking (THB) and smuggling of humans are often mixed to the point that differences between the two become increasingly blurred.

The Mediterranean has historically been a space of exchange, contact, and conquest. Migration – in all directions – has always been part of the cultural, political and economic negotiation around “Mare Nostrum.” Few things, however, have thrown European identities and the European political project into question more than the recent movement of migrants and refugees across the Mediterranean. In 2014, more than 170,000 migrants reached Italian shores on maritime routes. Italy was the prime landing site for boats, departing mostly from Libya. Approximately a quarter of those crossing were Syrian refugees, while the remainder came from West Africa, Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa. In 2015, the phenomenon transformed from a “Mediterranean problem” into a European-wide one, with a marked shift from the Central Mediterranean Route (from North Africa to Italy) to the Eastern Mediterranean Route (from Turkey towards Greece and along the Balkan route towards Central, Western and Northern Europe). Between January and mid-December 2015, more than 800,000 individuals arrived in Greece, compared to 150,000 in Italy during the same period. The distribution in 2016 to date has remained roughly the same with 147,000 arrivals in Greece and 13,000 in Italy (see infographic).

It is self-evident that large-scale migration of people has consequences for the communities they arrive into. We live in a world that is experiencing growing populations (often with expanding numbers of middle class people who are more likely to move) and that is increasingly interconnected. Most analyses therefore indicate that the majority of countries in the world face increasing people movement, often people moving for short durations and for a range of reasons. Governments will thus increasingly be expected to grapple with the consequences of migration for communities on the ground.

The term “environmental refugees” was used for the first time in 1985, when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) researcher Essam El-Hinnawi defined these persons as those “who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life.”

On 1 January 2016, the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals (SDGs) come into effect. The same day, the UN System Staff College (UNSSC)1 inaugurated the UNSSC Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development, which is tasked to support the UN system in implementing the new development Agenda through learning, training and knowledge management.

The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, commonly known as the “Trafficking Protocol” (2000), marks the beginning of a harmonized definition of Trafficking in Human Beings (THB), later on consolidated by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (2005) and, more recently, by the Directive 2011/36 of the European Parliament and of the Council on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, transposed into the Portuguese legislation in August 2013 and thus revising several internal laws, namely the Article 160 of the Penal Code (Trafficking in Persons).

As Europe struggles to find a coherent approach to its burgeoning refugee and migrant crisis, one set of actors has been universally vilified: the migrant smugglers. While they are not the cause of the current crisis, they have certainly amplified it, and are often responsible for the greatest violations against human rights and protection. Turning attention and public outcry toward the smugglers arguably allows the EU member states to detract – and distract – from their own derogations of their obligations to international law and refugee protection.

If I awake to look out my window, walk out my front door and to my right, left and for as far as my eyes can see, my once tranquil city is plagued with carnage, bloodshed, strife and civil war would I not seek a safer life just over the mountains or across the sea? The idea of migration being a human right is far too often overlooked in the domains of international security organizations, as domestic governments and global policy makers attempt to fortify parts of the world to populations they have deemed undesirable. In the literature, it is suggested by sociologists that migrants tend to follow a pattern of South-North movement trajectories, abandoning a life of fear for a sense of freedom, democracy and sustained peace which is otherwise foreign to them. Once the person has transitioned from a third to first world country, often times they are the subject of unjust stigmatization and discrimination due to their ethnic origins.

From politically charged headlines to hate-filled interactions on social media, the phenomenon of words being used as weapons has rapidly taken shape in the public sphere within the last decade. Advances in global communication have made it easier for people across the world to stay in touch, exchange ideas, and foster cooperation at all levels of society. Nevertheless, communication technologies can also be used to spread extremist ideologies, racism, xenophobia, and other social ills, while potentially inciting individuals or groups to commit psychological abuse or physical acts of violence in the real world.

It is widely recognized that the main purpose of the criminal justice system does not lie exclusively in punishing offenders, but above all and primarily, in respecting and restoring the human rights, dignity and needs of victims of crime.

Many countries are now dealing with cases of large-scale institutional child sexual abuse. The institutional aspects of child sexual abuse include: inadequate procedures to protect children; values that place the reputations of organisations above bringing child sex offenders to justice; marginalization of victims and whistleblowers; failure to involve police authorities to investigate criminality; and people in authority misusing their power to target vulnerable children through paedophile networks and organized crime syndicates. The hidden and insidious nature of institutional child sexual abuse makes it impossible to estimate its true extent.