Evidence and migrants’ voices: the missing links in the EU’s new Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling
In the 2023 State of the Union Address, the President of the European Commission announced an International Conference on fighting people smuggling. This International Conference on a Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling took place on November 27th in Brussels.
Now that the conference is over, the Mixed Migration Centre revisits its key messages on migrant smuggling, based on over a decade of data collection and research, including more than 120,000 interviews with migrants themselves, many of whom have first-hand experience with smuggling and are able to offer realistic and real-life insights. These key messages are meant to provide an evidence base to policy makers working on smuggling, so here we take stock to see if, and how, they have been considered during the conference.
Key message 1: To design adequate policy responses to human smuggling, a balanced and nuanced narrative on smugglers and smuggling is essential. Human smuggling involves many different profiles and roles. Too often, where people stand in the migration debate defines whether smugglers are portrayed as malicious criminals or benign travel agents.
Unfortunately, the balanced narrative has been missing in both the State of the Union announcing the conference and in the conference itself. The Vice-President for Promoting our European Way of Life is quoted in the press release saying: “In the EU we must take steps to ensure this heinous crime is properly and uniformly criminalised”. Throughout, the language is infused with references to the fight against crime. A Call to Action for a Global Alliance was launched at the conference, as crucial “for coming together on prevention, response and alternative to irregular migration”. It is clear that the focus on stopping irregular migration defines the Commission’s one-sided portrayal of all smugglers as malicious criminals. The Press Release also indicates that migrants should be protected from being smuggled. This denies the reality, as described in MMC’s key messages, that smuggling often offers refugees and migrants their only viable path out of insecurity or poverty, even though it indeed often also undermines the rule of law and puts refugees and migrants at great risk.
Key message 2: The role state officials play in allowing smugglers to operate with impunity, as well as their involvement and collusion in perpetrating abuses against refugees and migrants, must be better investigated and perpetrators should be held accountable.
Although MMC was not present at the conference and as such cannot know the content of all discussions during the meeting, neither in the Press Release, nor the Call to Action, is there any reference to the issue of corruption or the role of state officials in making migrant smuggling possible. However, the evidence is clear: along many mixed migration routes, corruption provides an enabling environment for migrant smuggling to flourish. The fact that the conference participants list was, except for three UN agencies, made up of only state representatives (see below) may not have helped to address this elephant in the room.
Key message 3: The simplistic narrative of the ‘war on smuggling’ ignores the inherent complexity of smuggling and serves as a useful smokescreen for efforts to curb irregular migration. It leads to potentially fewer but better-organised criminal networks and to increasingly criminalised policy responses to irregular migration. This approach is likely to increase the vulnerability of those on the move and risks increasing instability in origin and transit countries.
Reporting on the Conference, the EU Observer wrote: “The European Commission says migrant smuggling has never been so profitable or so deadly — despite a decade of policies and so-called action plans to crush the trade.” The word ‘despite’ may need to be replaced by ‘because of’. It is clear the key message above has not been considered.
While the EU realises and acknowledges migrant smuggling is flourishing, instead of re-thinking the approach, it doubles-down on the narrative of war and an increasingly criminalised response. In other words, with the announced approach, it is likely to continue to boost instead of break the business model of smugglers. While legal pathways and alternatives to irregular migration are mentioned in the Call to Action, these have been mentioned in a wide range of proposals and action plans before, but so far insufficiently materialised to significantly address irregular migration and migrant smuggling.
In September, MMC wrote that the “Ukraine model” should feature as a potential powerful tool to fight human smuggling in the upcoming international conference the EU president announced. ‘Ukraine’ provides a clear example of what happens when people forced to flee are provided with legal pathways. While almost all Afghans, Syrians and Iraqis MMC interviewed in Europe used a smuggler, hardly any Ukrainian did. If legal pathways – offered through the activation of the Temporary Protection Directive – for Ukrainians would not have existed, millions would have had no choice but to pay for the services of smugglers to leave their country. This would have generated a business opportunity for smugglers with millions of potential ‘clients, worth at least a few billion euros.
However, this business opportunity did not exist. In other words, this was breaking the business model of smugglers on an unprecedented scale. Yet, despite the continuous narrative of breaking the business model, such as in the Call to Action, there is no acknowledgment of how the EU has done exactly that and what can be learnt from it and potentially applied in other displacement and migration contexts.
Key message 4: Human trafficking and human smuggling are different phenomena, even if they overlap. The two should not be deliberately conflated to justify a tough and criminalised approach to human smuggling. However, it should also be recognised that the lines between smuggling and trafficking can be blurry. It is crucial to step up the response against ‘aggravated smuggling’ and to hold smugglers who are perpetrators of human rights violations accountable.
In the September State of the Union, the EU President said: “They [smugglers] attract desperate people with their lies. And put them on deadly routes across the desert, or on boats that are unfit for the sea. The way these smugglers operate is continuously evolving. [..] And we need to work with our partners to tackle this global plague of human trafficking.” This was a prime example of conflating smuggling and trafficking.
On a positive note, in the documentation on the Conference, while human trafficking is referred to frequently, the distinction with migrant smuggling is generally made clear (although the Call to Action does say “migrant smugglers are poly-criminal, involved in trafficking in human beings […]”). More importantly, the EU announced to step up the response to cases of aggravated smuggling offences by harmonising and increasing penalties and announced a clearer definition of smuggling, to also include the issue of serious harm to a person.
Key message 5: The role of smugglers as those who encourage and fuel irregular migration is overestimated in public and policy discourse.
As mentioned above, in her State of the Union the EU President mentioned that “smugglers attract desperate people with their lies”. This builds on the widespread and persistent narrative that smugglers lure people into dangerous and irregular journeys. Yet, the evidence simply does not support this. Out of more than 27.000 migrants who reported to have used smugglers, interviewed by MMC in recent years globally, only 8% said that smugglers played a role in their decision to migrate.
Conclusion
To conclude: it is clear that evidence played a limited role in the discussions. This unfortunately doesn’t come as a surprise, as much of the existing evidence, if considered, would inevitably challenge the very foundations of the EU’s approach to irregular migration. This approach seems to be based on the premise that smugglers alone bear the full responsibility for the very existence of irregular journeys, and all violations against migrants occurring in the context of such journeys. According to the EU narrative smugglers would lure people into irregular migration, organize all aspects of the journeys, be single-handedly responsible for all violations occurring during such journeys, including trafficking and exploitation. This way, the ‘war against smuggling’ can be presented, publicly, as a magic bullet for reducing irregular migration. But this oversimplistic narrative distracts from the complexities of mixed migration’s wide range of drivers, the lack of rule of law along key routes, and the unavailability of legal avenues for refugees and migrants, leading, eventually, to inadequate responses.
One way the issue of the limited use of evidence and real-life experiences with smuggling in the discussions could have been avoided, is opening the conference to a more diverse audience beyond state officials. Experts, academics, civil society representatives and, importantly, migrants themselves, should have been there. To ensure the perspective of the affected people and communities as well as existing evidence are included in the discussions, to ensure the necessary balance and nuance and to ensure the call to action is reflective of realities on the ground.
It is a missed opportunity that this did not happen in Brussels, but with the announced follow-up from the conference, such as expert groups and a stocktaking conference in 2024, it is not too late to ensure migrants’ voices and evidence take centre stage in all discussions and policy development on migrant smuggling going forward. The MMC stands ready to support.