refugees

Michaël Neuman spent ten days in Libya with Médecins Sans Frontières teams working in detention centres for migrants. From his stay, he brings back the following impressions that illustrate the gloomy situation of the people who are held there, for months or years, and the even more difficult situation of all those subject to kidnapping and torture.

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Guillaume Binet/Myop

Op-Ed

The state: from sieve to smuggler

10/09/2018

Numerous politicians, from Daniel Cohn-Bendit to Marine Le Pen and including Emmanuel Macron, denounce what they claim is collusion between organisations helping migrants (humanitarian workers) and smugglers (criminals). One group operates in full public view, the other out of sight, but both are said to be working together to help people illegally cross borders.

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Andrew McConnell/Panos Pictures

Op-Ed

NGOs are not in collusion with smugglers

10/07/2018

Humanitarian aid organisations carrying out rescues at sea were made into the accomplices of human traffickers. This accusation is as absurd as it is unacceptable. Not only do rescue operations at sea save people from drowning, but they evacuate people in situations of immediate danger in Libya, MSF recalls.

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To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Isabelle Defourny, 'Forgive us for inconveniencing you by not letting them drown', 2 December 2022, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/camps-refugees-idps/forgive-us-inconveniencing-you-not-letting-them-drown

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'Forgive us for inconveniencing you by not letting them drown'

En Libye, les oubliés

elba.msf — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 15:38:26 +0000

Date de publication

02/03/2020

elba.msf Tue, 03/10/2020 - 16:40

Michaël Neuman

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

It’s departure season. Makeshift boats with men, women and children aboard are taking to the sea one after the other. Since the beginning of the year, 2300 people have made it to Europe - and more than 2000 have been intercepted and brought back to Libya by coastguards trained and financed by Europeans. For some of them, reaching Europe has always been their goal. For others, the choice came after being caught up in human trafficking rings and subjected to torture and abuse. Their routes cross here, but their reasons for leaving their home countries are rarely univocal. It is February 2020 and many people are waiting to try their luck. They left from Tripoli, Khoms, and Sabratha… cities where conflict, business interests, tribalism, semblances of a functioning state and corruption intermingle. Libyans are not spared by the effects of unrest and war. Yet, visitors are struck by how normal life seems here. The packed fruit and vegetable markets and heavy traffic clogging up the streets of Tripoli appear to confirm this normality, but in fact reflect a city groaning under the weight of the displaced people arriving in large numbers from areas affected by the country’s war of attrition between the Libyan interim government, which still reigns over Tripoli and part of the west coast, and the LNA, led by Field Marshal Haftar who controls much of the rest of the country. International powers - Italy, France, Russia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates - have gradually joined the fray, transforming Libya into a powder keg liable to explode with every warning shot fired by one of the belligerents. And today, as a result of the head-to-head between Erdogan and Putin, developments in the conflict depend as much on events in Idlib, Syria, as in Tripoli.

This then is the war-torn country in which the European Union is deploying its policy of support to the interception and return of "migrants". We are talking the full works: the financing and training of Libyan coastguards, the delegation of sea rescue to merchant vessels, the intimidation of NGO rescue boats, the suspension of Operation Sophia, etc. And nothing helps : not the bombings of Tripoli's port and airport, nor the rocket attacks on detention centres in close proximity to military installations, not even the witness accounts of the appalling living conditions in these detention centres, the misappropriation of international funding or the extreme precarity of the migrants living in Libya’s cities are enough to shake European certitudes. Hypocrisy reigns: the European Union claims to be against detention while cultivating it with its support for the Libyan interception system; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees condemns interceptions at sea without ever mentioning the responsibility of the Europeans.

Eleven detention centres are currently placed under the responsibility of the Libyan Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM). The list changes regularly, but we do not always know why. Nor do we know whether the disappearance of a centre really means that it has been emptied of its detainees, or whether they are still living there under some informal and probably even more violent regime. Once in these centres, people never know when they will get out: some escape, others manage to buy their way out, many rot there for months or even years. The waiting is physically and psychologically devastating. This is the fate of the detainees in Dar El Jeb, near Zintan in the Nafusa mountains, far removed and completely forgotten: most of them – Eritreans - have been there for two years or even longer.

There is not enough food to go round and the cells - which the migrants are rarely allowed to leave - are dark and either very cold or very hot. The long days are punctuated by the sound of keys in locks and rattling bars. In the night of Saturday 29 February to Sunday 1st March 2020, ten days or so after I left, a fire – no doubt accidental – in the Dar El Jebel detention centre claimed the life of a young Eritrean man.

We can certainly confirm that the work begun in these centres, the focus on improving the living conditions, the medical consultations, the food supplements, and also - and perhaps most importantly - our physical, visible and regular presence have helped to humanise them, and even to reduce the levels of violence. But we also know that any progress made is fragile, easily undermined by a shift in the local equilibrium, a change of guards, trust gained and then lost and the services we render. It is not rare to hear the directors of these centres explain that women and children do not belong in these places; nor is it rare for them to inflict severe punishment on anyone who tries to escape. Some of them starve their detainees; others let them out when the company hired to provide meals suspends its services because it has not been paid. Yet, if the doors of some of these detention centres were to be thrown open, many of the detainees would probably stay inside, preferring the precarious existence they know to the frightening uncertainties outside. Our teams have been told as much by many people. In this fragmented country, local political dynamics and stakes dominate. Something we learn quickly in Libya is that it is impossible to generalise a situation.

We are equally certain that it is not our vocation to become the health service of a system of arbitrary detention. These people must get out. They are mostly men, but there are also women and children, sometimes very young, sometimes born out of rape, sometimes born in detention. Exposure to violence, vulnerability to militia and people traffickers, and the possibility for inmates to work and earn some money vary considerably from one centre to another - as do the chances of humanitarian aid organisations to gaining space to work.

And most importantly, we know that the official detention centres only hold two or three thousand of the endangered migrants in Libya. So, what about the others? Many of them work, living the precarious existence that is the lot - to varying degrees, of course – of so many immigrants around the world, from Dubai to Paris, Khartoum to Bogota. But several tens of thousands more, either through bad luck or because they do not want to make a life in Libya, resort to the untrustworthy services of people traffickers and are at very high risk of abduction, of course, kidnapping for ransom, torture and abuse. Some of these “migrants”, somewhere between 45,000 and 50,000, mostly from Eritrea, Sudan or Somalia, are recognised as “refugees or asylum seekers” by the High Commission for refugees. Vast numbers of others, from Nigeria, Mali, Morocco, Guinea, Bangladesh, etc., are considered “economic migrants”. They are the most alone.

For those in detention centres, there is a still a slight chance of being relocated. Last year, the HCR was able to organise the departure of 2400 people to Niger and Rwanda, where they were once again placed in centres while they waited for another country, usually European, to accept them. At this rate, it will take 20 years to evacuate everyone – and that’s without counting the new arrivals. Furthermore, the “resettlement” programme gives priority to people identified as vulnerable, i.e. women, children and the sick. Single adult men – which includes most of the Eritreans, for example - have little chance of being among the rare people selected. But deeply in debt and with legitimate fears for their safety in their home country, they will not return under any circumstances. Having lost faith in the HCR's ability to get them out – their only remaining hope is a dangerous and unlikely crossing of the Mediterranean.

When the HCR does get people out of detention centres, as there are no other safe places, it sends them to the cities, mainly Tripoli, where they become “urban refugees” and receive a one-time-only aid package that it so basic that it is hard to see what protection it could possibly offer anyone. In the city, migrants are once again at the mercy of people traffickers and violence. This is what happened to two Eritreans, who were killed, last January. And yet these two had spent some time under the protection of the HCR at its Gathering and Departure Facility. The HCR opened this centre in Tripoli at the end of 2018. Co-managed with the Libyan authorities, it was initially designed to facilitate the evacuation of asylum seekers to other countries. Originally intended to accommodate 1,000 people, it did not survive for much more than a year, falling foul of the conflict that set the capital ablaze in April 2019 and the proximity of fighting militia.

In any case, some people prefer the certain precarity of detention centres to the even more worrying uncertainty of living outside: consequently, we regularly see people returning to them. In January, four Somali women, ordered to leave the GDF in January, chose to take a taxi and join their husbands who were being held at Dar El Jebel and from whom they had been separated by the HCR which does not recognise the legality of couples. After the false promises of evacuation, they are now faced with an additional absurdity: people registered with the HCR are not entitled to benefit from the International Organisation for Migration’s voluntary repatriation system, even if they wanted to.

For everybody else, unprotected by the HCR, the horizon is no more glowing. For them too, the only possibility of reaching Europe is a dangerous sea crossing. The alternative is a return home, promoted and organised by the International Organisation for Migration and felt by many to be an insuperable defeat. The IOM has organised more than 40,000 of these returns since 2016. In 2020, around 10,000 people are likely to accept a “voluntary departure”. A more absurdly inappropriate name for it would be hard to find… At least, these ones will be done with their Libyan experience.

The situation of migrants in Libya is both banal and exceptional. Exceptional because of the intense violence to which a large number of them are exposed – the violence of people traffickers and kidnappers, the violence of possibly dying at sea and the violence of war. But it is also terrifyingly banal: there is little difference between an Eritrean living with the rats under the Parisian bypass and in a detention centre in Khoms. Their experience of migration is incredibly violent, their situation is precarious and dangerous. The situation of a Darfuri in Agadez is not much better, nor that of an Afghan in Samos, Greece. It is difficult not to see this population - unable to move in this world of global mobility - as the most unwanted among the unwanted. They are the forgotten ones.

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Read more about Débat interne à MSF face à la politique migratoire de l’UE

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To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Libya: the forgotten ones, 2 March 2020, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/blog/camps-refugees-idps/libya-forgotten-ones

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Libya: the forgotten ones

Projection-débat / La Ville Monde

elba.msf — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 13:24:07 +0000

elba.msf Tue, 09/24/2019 - 15:24

Michaël Neuman

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

07/11/2019 - 18h30

Screening - debate "La Ville Monde" on Thursday 7th of November 2019, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm, in MSF's new premises at 14-34 avenue Jean Jaurès 75019 Paris.

Médecins Sans Frontières and Crash are pleased to invite you to a screening, followed by a debate, of the documentary film "La Ville Monde" (52', subtitled in English), directed by Antarès Bassis and produced by Les films du Balibari. The film, of which MSF is a partner, traces the trajectory of the La Linière camp in Grande-Synthe from its opening in March 2016 to the fire that destroyed it in April 2017.

Following the screening, you will be able to discuss with:

- Antarès Bassis, director of the film,
- Mélanie Playe, architecture referent at MSF,
- Michaël Neuman, Director of Studies at Crash, and advisor to migration,
- Laurent Sury, emergency cell manager, in charge of migrant projects in 2015-16, and initiator of the camp construction project (to be confirmed).

As part of a joint initiative with the municipality of Grande-Synthe, Médecins Sans Frontières built the camp in early 2016 and then carried out medical activities there until September of the same year. However, the association is totally absent from the film. The debate will be an opportunity to review the reasons for this absence – an absence which reflects the withdrawal of the organization from the camp.

The debate will thus provide feedback on this project: Why did we choose not to get involved in the management of the camp? What have we learned in terms of building habitats for migrant populations? What have we learned in terms of urban planning reflections? More broadly, what lessons do the main actors learn from this experience?

We are also expecting many guests, stakeholders in the project, including Damien Carême, Mayor of Grande-Synthe until this summer, Cyrille Hanappe, architect and developer of "La Ville Accueillante", as well as Yann Manzi, whose association Utopia 56 was the first camp manager.

20h30

Read more about Screening - debate / La Ville Monde

To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Screening - debate / La Ville Monde, 7 November 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/screening-debate-la-ville-monde

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Screening - debate / La Ville Monde

Médecins Sans Frontières-France : les tensions liées aux projets « Migrations »

elba.msf — Tue, 07 May 2019 09:28:53 +0000

Date de publication

07/05/2019

elba.msf Tue, 05/07/2019 - 15:07

Mission France

Michaël Neuman

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

This article was published in Alternatives Humanitaires - March 2019.

After abandoning Europe – and France in particular – for several years, the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières – where I work and the sole subject of this analysis – has returned. In summer 2015, it launched a series of aid projects for migrant populations in Greece and northern France, before gradually moving into other regions of the countryEven though they are outside Europe, the projects launched in Libya and Niger are also directly related.. These decisions were not taken without debate, with powerful voices within MSF promptly speaking up to stress the risks that these programmes posed for the organisation. This concern was partly based on recollections of MSF’s operational activity in France and its radical practices (some would call them “exuberances”) of the 1990s. The fact that these populations had no “medical needs” was also highlighted.

These operations were therefore deployed in a climate at times tinged with scepticism. This forced project managers to consider the public and operational position that an intervention in a wealthy country (which is also the organisation’s base) should adopt with populations whose needs required an in-depth revision of its operating methods, and which would inevitably be accompanied by the adoption of sometimes-radical political positions. In this article I shall try to explain this occasionally difficult relationship between operational constraints and political positioning by attempting to describe and analyse how the issue of migration proved to be a shock for the first responder organisation.

Shall we wipe the slate clean?

At this juncture I feel it is important to explain why I shall make no reference in this discussion to what built MSF and its legitimacy, starting with its work with refugee populations in camps, initially in South-East Asia, then in Central America and finally Africa. MSF played its part in challenging the totalitarian systems in Eastern Bloc countries by highlighting that the overwhelming majority of refugees were fleeing those very countries. It was the controversy surrounding the assistance given to the “boat people” in the China Sea that triggered the split between the founder members of Médecins Sans Frontières. Similarly, public challenges raised by Western countries on the fate of refugees is nothing new; in 1990, Rony Brauman, former president of MSF, published an article in which he demonstrated that images of refugees had lost their power in our collective and political conscience in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin WallRony Brauman, « Réfugiés, Go Home ! », Politique Internationale, n° 47, printemps 1990.. Even though the social resonance of the migration issue is not the same in 2019 as it was in 1990, the perpetual nature of the challenges is staggering. Lastly, MSF’s experience with migrant populations in Europe did not begin in 2015. In early 1983, when Nigeria expelled around two million African migrants who were, in the words of Rony Brauman, “driven back by horsewhips and clubs”, Brauman described their situation in MSF’s annual report as follows: “Both MSF teams, that had entered the country through Togo, could only confirm the situation. Exhausted and terrified, those who were being expelled however showed no particular medical problems […]. The situation was clearly way beyond the capabilities of an organisation like ours and, from a technical point of view, the role played by this mission remained an extremely modest one.” He concluded by underscoring “the nature of our intervention, as derisory as it may be, is yet full of meaning: that of a certain kinship with these men plunged into misery and humiliation.” Any resemblance with current times is obviously not coincidental.

The decision to limit this analysis to recent times and the migrations that are the subject of much debate in Europe is therefore partially arbitrary. It can be justified very precisely by the European context in which the migrations are happening, and by the specific relationship that connects MSF to the originating countries.

MSF in France: a long history

Launched in 1987, the Mission Solidarité France owes its origins to the discovery of a “new poverty” following the publication of a report by Joseph Wresinski, founder of the movement ATD Quart Monde. It was the shock of seeing people in the streets on their doorstep that encouraged a group of MSF doctors to act, demonstrating that the principle of impartiality to which it frequently clings is not particularly useful in understanding the mechanisms used to allocate the association’s resources.

For MSF, the introduction of its activities in France must also be understood in the context of its competition with Médecins du Monde (MDM), which launched its “Mission France” in 1986. In addition, but to a lesser extent, the rivalry between French organisations seeing a need as well as an opportunity to raise funds was also a factor.

At the time, MSF was developing its free healthcare and dental activities and its measures against lead poisoning. Its aim was to alert France’s public authorities to the existence of gaps in access to healthcare for the most at-risk sections of the population, regardless of whether or not they were French. The mission was based on a lightweight operational structure consisting of a small number of healthcare centres, the goal being to gather evidence and have the legitimacy to generate a political message without giving the impression of replacing the State.

A few years later, in 1994, Philippe Biberson, the organisation’s President at the time, explained MSF’s interest in providing healthcare beds “as French doctors and as a medical organisation operating on French soil”. The intervention in France was therefore somewhat exceptional due to its proximity to its social base and MSF’s perception of the role of the State in Europe, and particularly in France.

These efforts were the result of partnerships with groups and other organisations, including MDM. Thus a group of thirty-five organisations mobilised against the expulsion of undocumented foreign nationals suffering from serious diseases. MSF also worked with government ministries to develop free medical care (1991, Édith Cresson Government) and the drafting of the concept of a universal right to health insurance (1995, Alain Juppé Government).

In October  1996, a project for “social services and legal support for foreign nationals resident in France” was put to the vote at MSF’s Board of Directors due to its “non-medical and unusual” and, in a word, “exceptional” nature. It was designed to demonstrate “our split from the charity sector”. Some members of the organisation took part in demonstrations aiming to prevent the expulsions. The work undertaken for the universal medical cover policy (CMU) from 1997 would confirm that MSF had indeed abandoned its exclusive role as first responder. Advisor to cabinet ministers as well as campaigners for access to healthcare for foreign nationals, MSF had changed its image. The adoption of the CMU in 1999 would mark the highpoint of a programme promoted internally by a group of determined figures, themselves supported by the organisation and driven by a specific political vision: a belief in a robust public service for the benefit of all. At least two additional features characterised the mission: a desire to tackle public policies, and ongoing partnerships with other organisations, members of the political establishment, unions and institutions.

After the rise, the fall

In May 2005, when alluding to access to healthcare and exclusion programmes, including what is now known as “Mission France”, MSF’s President Jean-Hervé Bradol stated: “We are unable to deliver a quality action in the timeframe required for such complex issues […]. ‘Social progress’ primarily comes under political and social action and not under humanitarian actionMédecins Sans Frontières, President’s report for 2004, General Assembly, 2005..”

This did not mean that Mission France was closed. A project to provide psychological care to non-Francophone asylum seekers – failed or otherwise – was launched in Paris in 2007, despite opposition from the organisation’s President. With Sarkozyism on the rise and then victorious, there was little doubt in some of his supporters’ minds that the project would evolve into a tool to oppose the immigration policy pursued by the new French Government and, furthermore, European governments. However, the initiative was ill-conceived, and to avoid exposure to accusations of radicalism, the teams partially renounced the public actions that had been a feature of previous projects.

The organisation’s position was all the more precarious since the government was making an increasingly clear distinction between “good” (i.e. humanitarian) organisations, subscribing to the idea of assistance, and “bad” (i.e. activist and political) organisations. While the European States, led by France, had decided not to let the migrant populations die, they de-legitimised any political actions developed to support them, thus leaving only room for health-related action.

The project no longer had any collective support and tensions between the project teams and managers at head office were running high, added to this, there was disorder in the mission’s administrative management. Barely mobilised by the project’s low level of activity and convinced that no-one would die even if it were brought to a halt, operational management decided to close the mission, which it did in 2012. However, other MSF sections, including the Greek, Belgian, Italian and Spanish sections in particular, would continue to carry out relief operations for migrant populations on their own soil or in North and West Africa.

Renaissance

In the summer of 2015, and after seeing images of the exodus of refugees from the Balkans, MSF felt compelled to reconsider its operations and its role in Europe. A little earlier, the Dutch section and the NGO, Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) had launched a relief operation in the Mediterranean and were subsequently joined by the Belgian section, which launched its own rescue operation. For the French section, which took on the role of a powerful intermediary for the operation, this was a way of regaining a foothold in the issue. With population movements on this scale, it realised that it had to fully commit itself.

Memories of the difficult closure of Mission France were still fresh in people’s minds, and with them came two questions. Firstly, what should the response be, given that most of these migrants were not ill and that MSF considered its “added value” to be low? Secondly, was there not then a risk of delving into “politics”, a word which some consider incompatible with the principle of neutrality claimed by MSF?

To both questions (the provision of medical services and, ultimately, of speaking out) a succinct reply was given: let’s engage, and we’ll see what happens. Actually, many people thought that it was impossible for us not to get involved, and furthermore, that this was happening “at home”. This was an implicit admission, like their predecessors in the 1980s, that these problems affected us differently. After a series of lively discussions where many operational managers still thought that this was no place for MSF and that it was too “risky”, evaluation missions were launched in Greece, the Balkans and northern France.

In doing so, the organisation was simply acknowledging that it was not operating outside its remit: it made no sense, internally or externally, to do nothing while lines of refugees and orange life jackets were filling our screens. In this respect, the shock that this migration sent through MSF was initially the same as that felt by French society. But questions remained.

Transformation

Operationally speaking, MSF had to reinvent itself. The type of aid to be given to migrants and refugees is a recurring problem for the organisation: in its collective subconscious, MSF places the greatest value on actions that aim to reduce mortality. In Greece, Italy and France, however, those people embarking on the difficult journey to northern Europe are, in many respects, “survivors”. Most of them are men in good physical shape and good health. Medical needs often concern minor injuries, skin diseases and, occasionally, chronic diseases, whilst for women they concern childbirth and pregnancy monitoring. Many express or demonstrate a need for psychological and psychiatric treatment, associated just as much with the trauma of their past experiences as their journey and the lack of prospects in their current situationPia Juul Bjertrup et al., “A life in waiting: Refugees’ mental health and narratives of social suffering after European Union border closures in March 2016”, Social Science & Medicine, October 2018.. Some, of course, are more vulnerable in terms of health, but in their desperate race towards sanctuary it is mainly material needs, requests for information and social and legal aid that prove to be most urgent. With regard the construction of camps, such as La Linière, contrary to popular belief this is not part of MSF’s day-to-day remitSee Franck Esnée and Michaël Neuman, “Sheltering, hosting or receiving refugees: the unresolved ambiguities of the La Linière refugee camp”, Humanitarian Alternatives, n°.5, July 2017, p.30-43, http://alternatives-humanitaires.org/en/2017/07/01/sheltering-hosting-or-receiving-refugees-the-unresolved-ambiguities-of-the-liniere-refugee-camp/.

The revolution required is quite simple to define: to focus relief policy on personal autonomyĊetta Mainwaring, “Migrant agency: Negotiating borders and migration controls”, Migration Studies, Vol.4, n°3, 1 November 2016, p.289-308, https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnw013, and provide people with the services that are useful to them on their journey. And then do something else, such as provide protection in Libya or guidance with procedures in France, a per-user cost which is quite high. Although there is broad consensus on “what we see”, it is always difficult to go any further: how can we enter the migration debate without being prescriptive? What expertise can we claim? Comfortable with the subject of asylum, the organisation is much less so when dealing with migration; and with regard to expertise, there is a huge risk of reaching an uneasy compromise. This is how the deliberately vague concept of “safe passage”, which first and foremost highlights the dangers that current policies pose for people, was preferred over others.

But this vagueness reveals MSF’s discomfort. On the one hand, this discomfort will partially dissipate as the organisation gradually faces up to reality and, on the other, as it is exposed to technical reports. The projects implemented in Greece, France and Libya are gradually allowing us to assess the level of violence generated by the migration policies put into practice around the Mediterranean, and the modest means the organisation has at its disposal to contest those policies and address the violence. Furthermore, work in the field of social sciences – I am thinking particularly of Karen Akoka’s work on constructing the figure of the refugeeSee Karen Akoka, « Crise des réfugiés, ou des politiques d’asile ?», La Vie des idées, 31 mai 2016., Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani’s work on sea rescueSee Lorenzo Pezzani and Charles Heller, “Liquid Traces”, 2014; “Death by Rescue”, 2016 and “Mare Clausum”, 2018. and the Babels research programmehttps://anrbabels.hypotheses.org – can be used to enrich and challenge the organisation’s own analyses.

It is through this greater intellectual conviction and a more consistent operational experience that the organisation can speak out and throw the hitherto-observed caution to the wind. It is asserting itself as an advisor and adopting positions that place it firmly in opposition to State practices.

Between subversion and balance: a constant quest

For all that, migration itself has been the subject of numerous discussions and initiatives. The MSF movement quickly became a household name thanks to its Twitter account @MSF_Sea, dedicated to monitoring relief operations at sea. But the repeated and strikingly telegenic and disturbing images of rescue operations and (often white) European “rescuers” soon proved unsatisfactory and insufficient. MSF went looking for personal stories (published on the dedicated Facebook page “Voices from the Road”https://www.facebook.com/MSF.VoicesFromTheRoad/, which was launched in 2015 with the aim of gathering the life stories and personal experiences of migrants) and drew on its partnerships with photographers (ref. Bruno Fert and the “Itinéraires intérieurs” projecthttps://www.msf.fr/evenements/exposition-photo-itineraires-interieurs-a-paris).

Other initiatives, designed to be highly innovative, were also developed, such as MSF’s six-part web-series Johnny Hunterhttps://jenesuispasjohnny.msf.fr/page/episode?pageId=2 which caused major controversy within the organisation, with some deeming it vulgar and inappropriate. These means of expression used by MSF to speak out have continually been viewed as an institution publicly expressing criticismhttps://www.msf.fr/eclairages/assistance-aux-personnes-en-migration and even personal criticism (as was the case with the open letter written in my name to French MPs representing the La République en Marche party in June  2018Michaël Neuman, « Secours en mer, Libye et politique migratoire: Lettre ouverte aux député.e.s LREM », Blog de Médiapart, 30 juin 2018,https://blogs.mediapart.fr/mikael/blog/280618/secours-en-mer-libye-et-politique-migratoire-lettre-ouverte-aux-deputees-lrem, an article written by Jean-Hervé Bradol and another by Rony Brauman, both of whom were Directors of Studies at CRASHJean-Hervé Bradol, « De l’État passoire à l’État passeur »,Le Monde, 10 septembre 2018, https://www.msf-crash.org/fr/publications/de-letat-passoire-letat-passeur; Rony Brauman, « La raison humanitaire n’est pas la raison politique », Le Figaro, 11 juillet 2018.).

We are never more publicly heard than when we carry out efficient, useful and slightly subversive relief operations. And in our case, despite some notable exceptions, we only have been heard to a limited extent. Since the spring of 2015, the sea rescue operations have provided a response to the shipwrecks while demonstrating the considerable deficit in the capacities for intervention. They continued until 2018, mainly through a partnership between the MSF Dutch section and SOS Méditerranée after this organisation ceased working with Médecins du Monde. These operations allowed increasing pressure to be brought to bear on States, as was the case with the migrant camp in Grande-SyntheSee the documentary La Ville Monde directed by Antarès Bassis (a Les films du Balibari production), http://www.balibari.com/films/la-ville-monde-the-world-city, which no doubt belongs to that category of activity which significantly improves the quality of life of its target population and changes the power relationship with national authorities forced to accept an official camp on their country’s soil.

In recent times, tougher political practices in Europe have reopened the debate about MSF’s position. Faced with tougher national policies since 2017, and even more so since Matteo Salvini was appointed Minister of the Interior in 2018, the Italian section has widened the debate against a backdrop of judicial harassment and falling donations. There are ongoing tensions between an executive which can appear anxious to maintain its operations and not alienate its social base and donors, and an associative base (within the board of directors in particular) which at times is more drawn towards activism. For the time being, the French section has been spared such discussions, but given the way the political debate is changing, there is nothing to prevent us from thinking that this may soon be the case.

This unpublished text is taken from a paper presented by the author at the conference “Documenting ‘shock experiences’ of migration: towards a transformation of social representations” University of Poitiers, 7-9 November 2018.

To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Médecins Sans Frontières-France: tensions arising from the “Migration” projects, 7 May 2019, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/camps-refugees-idps/medecins-sans-frontieres-france-tensions-arising-migration

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Médecins Sans Frontières-France: tensions arising from the “Migration” projects

Du sauveteur au pirate, ou le sauvetage en mer hors-la-loi

elba.msf — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 13:58:54 +0000

Le Monde

elba.msf Wed, 12/12/2018 - 14:58

Date de publication

12/12/2018

search and rescue operations

smugglers

Michaël Neuman & Mego Terzian

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

Mego

Terzian

Mégo Terzian est médecin pédiatre, ancien responsable des urgences et président de Médecins Sans Frontières depuis 2013.

By the same author

Opinion piece in Le Monde, 07 December 2018.

Judicial, bureaucratic and political campaigns against search and rescue in the Mediterranean Sea have eventually forced the Aquarius, the rescue ship chartered with MSF’s partner SOS Méditerranée patrolling from 2016 to 2018, to stop its activities.

In 2014, the Italian authorities set up Operation Mare Nostrum, heralding a period during which rescuing boats carrying migrants in distress was considered legitimate. What was first and foremost a legal obligation had gained political and public acceptance.

Then, in 2018, Italy thrust itself to the forefront once again, but this time to declare it considered the rescue operations no longer acceptable. At the beginning of the summer, newly appointed Interior Minister Matteo Salvini turned his attention to closing Italy’s ports to search and rescue ships. Pushing forward a policy of deterrence already well advanced by his predecessor Marco Minniti, Salvini finally succeeded in winding up all means and resources intended for rescuing people escaping from Libya.

Surely, civil society organisations, such as Sea Watch, Mare Jonio and Proactiva Open Arms are still doing what they can to maintain, in a remarkable show of perseverance, their sea search and rescue operations. Voluntary pilots from Moonbird and Colibri continue their reconnaissance flights to spot boats adrift in the waves and prevent the long list of deaths—over 17,000 since 2014—from becoming even longer. But all these organisations have enormous problems to contend with: interminable red tape, obstacles imposed on their technical stop-overs, bans on docking in Europe and even prosecution, as is the case of the Aquarius. Already stripped of its flag after pressure from Italy, the vessel is now under threat of seizure because of the outrageous accusations of organised crime that have been levelled against it—yet again the work of Italy. Some of its crew and MSF team members have been implicated and their rescue work criminalised. It is patently obvious that the sea search and rescue effort we, sometimes in partnership with other organisations, have taken part in on five different ships since 2015 is now outlawed.

The victims of this uneven contest are undoubtedly asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants—for whom hardly anyone appear to care little. Indeed, how many victims have there been? With nobody to bear witness at sea, nobody knows. Meanwhile, the trap Libya has become is closing, a trap undoubtedly maintained by diverse Libyan authorities, but whose workings are most definitely the product of European creativity.

Thousands of people are condemned to trying to survive the tangled web of Libya’s official detention centres and clandestine prisons. We strongly recommend our decision-makers visit these places of detention so that they can get some sense of what the future holds for their fellow human beings. Many other migrants and refugees, ensnared in the tight net of a state-of-the-art military-technical system, die sooner as they try to make their way from Africa’s vast sub-Sahelian region.

Europe's absence

There’s a lot of talk of Italy, but the unanimity shown by Europe in the face of this deadly spiral is just as significant. Neither France nor Spain, or any other country or European institution, has voiced any real objection to the carving up of Europe’s external border management policy by leaders employing racist and violent methods. This is hardly surprising, given that the stratagem was set in motion some time ago.

So, there’s almost no one willing to offer shelter to a few hundred people who, by an incredible stroke of luck, were able to benefit in a few places from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ relocation programme. Turning back the unwanted at Europe’s frontiers has long been official, including between France and Italy or in the case of the 15,000 people left to fall through the cracks in appalling conditions on the Greek islands—a sordid backcloth to what was playing out on European borders.

Spanish fishing boat the Nuestra Madre de Loreto is the most recent symbol. Stranded out at sea for over a week after going to the rescue of 12 people, the trawler was refused permission to disembark them in European ports—including Spain’s. Spain had previously been a role model for taking in people rescued at sea, but during this incident, its government has been advocating for survivors to be returned to Libya’s prisons. It was only when the captain had decided, in spite of everything, to set course for Spain that the trawler received authorisation to transfer the survivors it had rescued to Malta.

A general failure to assist

A far more ominous period is looming on the horizon. At the same time as the delegating of sea search and rescue operations to Libya’s coastguard, failure to assist people in distress in the Mediterranean has is becoming increasingly common. We all remember 2011 when, right in the middle of western military intervention in Libya, dozens of migrants drowned after drifting at sea for several days—in spite of the flights and reconnaissance deployed by numerous NATO planes and ships. The failure to assist has made a comeback. Merchant ships concerned they won’t know where they will be able to disembark people they rescue alter their usual routes or change course at the sight of a boat they would really prefer not to see. This is what our teams providing assistance in Libya heard from survivors rescued by the Nivin, a container ship whose story depicts only too well the extent of the cowardice of European political leaders and international agencies, who had all asserted at some point that the rescued migrants would be not be sent back to Libya against their will.

But that’s exactly what happened with the Nivin when the 95 survivors on board refused to disembark in the port of Misrata, situated east of Tripoli. For ten days, our teams provided medical assistance to those preferring to remain on the ship and were able to see no serious consideration was given to seeking an alternative to their return to detention. Libyan forces then stormed the ship to force the disembarkation. A dozen people were wounded, some seriously, and several of those involved now face prosecution in Libya for piracy.

Insanity, torture, death—these are the alternatives for refugees and migrants in Libya. And as for merchant sailors, they have a choice between not honouring their obligations and suffering persecution at European hands. As countries on both sides of the Mediterranean give themselves the power to exercise the right of life and death over people whose only motivation is the quest for a better life, we will not stop rescuing people where we are still able to do it, supporting sea search and rescue operations and contributing to renewing the model. Spectators and lucid participants, we will not refrain from challenging these rationales of sacrifice.

Read more about Sea Search and Rescue Operations Outlawed

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To cite this content :
Michaël Neuman, Mego Terzian, Sea Search and Rescue Operations Outlawed, 12 December 2018, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/camps-refugees-idps/sea-search-and-rescue-operations-outlawed

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Sea Search and Rescue Operations Outlawed

Frontières et hospitalité

elba.msf — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:36:15 +0000

elba.msf Thu, 10/11/2018 - 15:36

Benjamin Boudou

Benjamin

Boudou

Politiste, chercheur à l’institut Max Planck et auteur de deux ouvrages parus récemment : Politique de l’hospitalité. Une généalogie conceptuelle, paru en 2017, CNRS éditions et Le dilemme des frontières. Ethique et politique de l’immigration, paru en 2018, Editions de l’EHESS.

By the same author

26/11/2018 - 18h00

Conference/debate with Benjamin Boudou, political scientist and researcher at the Max Planck institute.

In light of the very rich news environment regarding the management of migration flows, the consequences of the control exerted over borders and the linkages of humanitarians to such mechanisms, we exchanged on the legitimacy of borders along with the uses of the notion of hospitality. Despite constant exposure to the political and news cycles, we have at MSF, very few occasions to delve into conceptual tools and reasoning offered by political science and philosophy. This encounter was the occasion to discuss and debate familiar notions and give them a deeper layer of understanding.

Benjamin Boudou is the author of two books recently published: Politique de l’hospitalité. Une généalogie conceptuelle, 2017, CNRS éditions and Le dilemme des frontières. Ethique et politique de l’immigration, 2018, Editions de l’EHESS.

Through the study of different types of hospitality (savage, antic, sacred, cosmo-political), Benjamin Boudou explores in his first book, the political dimension of the concept. Hospitality is not only a private virtue, but also a political practice aiming at the integration or inclusion of the foreigner, on which the rules of borders are built. These power and domination relations lead Benjamin Boudou, in his second book to question the legitimacy of borders, and to think about their democratization rather than their opening – in the sense that it goes hand in hand with democratic values.

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To cite this content :
Benjamin Boudou, Borders and Hospitality, 26 November 2018, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/borders-and-hospitality

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Borders and Hospitality

De l’État passoire à l’État passeur

elba.msf — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:22:38 +0000

elba.msf Mon, 09/10/2018 - 17:22

Date de publication

10/09/2018

smugglers

Jean-Hervé Bradol

Jean-Hervé

Bradol

Medical doctor, specialized in tropical medicine, emergency medicine and epidemiology. In 1989 he went on mission with Médecins sans Frontières for the first time, and undertook long-term missions in Uganda, Somalia and Thailand. He returned to the Paris headquarters in 1994 as a programs director. Between 1996 and 1998, he served as the director of communications, and later as director of operations until May 2000 when he was elected president of the French section of Médecins sans Frontières. He was re-elected in May 2003 and in May 2006. From 2000 to 2008, he was a member of the International Council of MSF and a member of the Board of MSF USA. He is the co-editor of "Medical innovations in humanitarian situations" (MSF, 2009) and Humanitarian Aid, Genocide and Mass Killings: Médecins Sans Frontiéres, The Rwandan Experience, 1982–97 (Manchester University Press, 2017).

By the same author

Opinion piece in Le Monde, 10 September 2018

It is therefore worth clarifying what we mean by smuggler, stripping away the enveloping aura of mystery to expose the reality. The first thing needed to open a border to a potential migrant is control over that self-same border. There is no such thing as a no man’s land in these disputed and sometimes dangerous border regions, they are controlled gun in hand. And who is holding the guns? The forces of order, either regulars, such as gendarmes and customs, police and army officers, or irregulars, such as militias and armed groups in countries like Libya where the state is weak.

We are not denying the existence of freelancers who know how to avoid border checkpoints and act beyond the reach of state forces and militias. But this freelance activity remains marginal in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of people who travel along government-controlled “migratory motorways”.

How do we know that smugglers are usually state employees and not shadowy criminals? Because Médecins Sans Frontières has been travelling these roads to exile for over forty years. On the few occasions when we were unable to obtain prior authorisations, we never crossed a border unaided. Each time the situation arose, we contacted the local forces of law and order for assistance. Sometimes we bribed them. The fact is that crossing borders is an activity with a market.

Brokers and smugglers

It is almost always intermediaries, incorrectly referred to as smugglers, who offer their services as go-betweens linking up travellers with the true smugglers – the vast majority of them state employees – who have the power to permit them to continue their journey. The services these go-betweens provide are nothing like those of a smuggler. They are simply brokers. This is an important nuance to understand and can best be compared to the difference between an insurance broker and an insurance company. Only the insurance company has the power to pay out on a claim.
In our experience, it is usually state representatives who have the power to allow people to cross borders. However much it might displease Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, most people who enter Italy after crossing the Mediterranean do so courtesy of the Italian navy. Ships chartered by NGOs can only dock at ports around the Mediterranean with government permission. And it is Italian state employees in Ventimiglia and the Southern Alps who facilitate departures for France.

But what occurred in 2015 is without doubt the most striking example of all, when Turkey allowed almost one million people to enter Europe. This led to the creation of mass migration routes so that these groups of people on the move could reach countries willing to receive them, primarily Germany and Sweden. The route out of Turkey was then closed down as a result of decisions taken by the states themselves: Turkey first, followed by the transit countries of the Balkans and, finally, the countries that were the migrants’ ultimate destinations.

None of this was the work of shadowy smugglers let alone of collusion with humanitarian workers. It is this massive involvement of state employees in the management of successive waves of migrations that explains why traffickers, who are universally condemned, are almost never apprehended. When a network is dismantled, business carries on as usual or quickly picks up again. The true smugglers, the forces of law and order, quickly replace one intermediary, or broker, with another.

Double benefit

In reality, very few clandestine journeys avoid customs checkpoints because states use control of their borders to obtain a double benefit, economic and political. They can scarcely be expected to turn their back on the financial gains generated by this activity. Where so-called traffickers earn hundreds of thousands of euros, states receive billions in subsidies in return for regulating flows. These vast sums, allocated for managing migration, thus sustain an entire industry.

There is nothing new in this, and we have a name for this trade: human trafficking. It generates benefits that are more than simply financial. Election results across Europe demonstrate that rabble-rousing instrumentalization of migration has become a good way to get elected as head of state.

The losers in these narrow games of power and self-interest are those who die on the journey, those who suffer violence and survive in abject conditions. According to the International Organization for Migration, 5,773 bodies were recovered and 11,089 lives were lost in the Mediterranean between 1 January 2014 and 30 July 2018.

Migrants suffer and die so that the countries they leave from, transit through and hope to reach can maximise what they perceive to be the benefits that their participation in the political economy of this human trafficking accords them. This self-renewing and self-perpetuating practice has existed around the Mediterranean for centuries.

What should we think of politicians at the head of countries who are currently claiming to be able to rapidly bring a halt to this process and who denounce NGOs as accomplices in an activity which is actually mainly organised by those same countries?

Read more about The state: from sieve to smuggler

To cite this content :
Jean-Hervé Bradol, The state: from sieve to smuggler, 10 September 2018, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/state-sieve-smuggler

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The state: from sieve to smuggler

La raison humanitaire n’est pas la raison politique

elba.msf — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 13:45:40 +0000

elba.msf Thu, 07/19/2018 - 15:45

Date de publication

11/07/2018

search and rescue operations

NGO

Rony Brauman

Rony

Brauman

Medical doctor, specialized in tropical medicine and epidemiology. Involved in humanitarian action since 1977, he has been on numerous missions, mainly in contexts of armed conflicts and IDP situations. President of Médecins sans Frontières from 1982 to1994, he also teaches at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) and is a regular contributor to Alternatives Economiques. He has published several books and articles, including "Guerre humanitaires ? Mensonges et Intox" (Textuel, 2018), "La Médecine Humanitaire" (PUF, 2010), "Penser dans l'urgence" (Editions du Seuil, 2006) and "Utopies Sanitaires" (Editions Le Pommier, 2000).

By the same author

Opinion column published in Le Figaro on 11 July 2018.

Humanitarian organisations coming to the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea are kindly required either to watch them drown or to hand them over to human traffickers and torturers. We have seen countless political statements, opinion polls and editorials on the need to take a harder line against African migrants and accusing NGOs of being the accomplices of “smugglers”. We have even heard it said that these NGOs are organising the departures of those aspiring to migrate to Europe coincide with the presence of a rescue ship, making relief workers conscious actors in a criminal enterprise.

It must be said that this accusation is not scandalous in itself, as comparable issues have existed in other circumstances over the last few decades. As I denounced these actions at the time, I’m hardly going to deny that such things happen. Yes, humanitarianism sometimes find itself serving violent causes and France - among others – is well aware of this, after the havoc it wreaked in Libya with its disastrous “humanitarian war”.

But in this particular case the situation is being turned on its head. The criminals are in fact those to whom European governments want us to hand over the migrants, those with whom relief workers are now being ordered to collaborate. And the relief workers are those endeavouring to help the prey escape from the claws of their predators. Because the majority of Libyan coast guards are not coast guards at all, and to call them that is an insult to the profession. As already certified by numerous witnesses and investigations, they are in fact working hand-in-hand with armed groups in Libya who live by their own laws. Torture, extortion, sex slavery, servitude - this is the fate awaiting migrants handed back to the so-called “coast-guards”, which explains why some would rather die at sea than return to a living hell. This is a situation to which no humanitarian aid organisation can resign itself, even in the name of national interest. President Macron should not be asking Antigone to collaborate with Creon.

For all that, humanitarian reason differs from political interests, and relief workers cannot and must not claim to define migration policy. Their organisations do not try to do so, actually, contrary to what is said in some circles in an attempt to blacken their name still further. But NGOs are concerned, as are those who support them, about the invasion of the public space by rhetoric that is palpably hostile to foreigners.

This concern is the reflection of another concern of a different nature but equally legitimate: the arrival of waves of migrants deemed unmanageable in a context of mass unemployment and rising nationalist tensions. It would be insulting to accuse those who harbour this concern of racism, as their fears cannot be reduced to hatred of others. We do not live in a world of unconditional hospitality; cultures – individual and collective – do not mix easily; relationships are not spontaneously harmonious, and even if these facts are exploited by dangerous demagogues, there is nothing racist about recognising and registering them. Nor, for that matter, is it irenic or narcissistic to point out that we have seen a thorough mixing of populations in Europe throughout the 20th century, especially since the end of the war, without this causing any major friction.

But we cannot condemn people for being afraid, especially if a moral stance is all we have to offer in response. What we need more than anything is a fresh perspective.

Europe’s increasingly hard-line policies, reflected in rhetoric and practices of rejection, have already had an effect, with a considerable reduction in the number of departures and a simultaneous increase in the number of interceptions by the Libyan “coast guards” (10,000 in 2018). However, this does not mean that migration is no longer an issue, and repression is not a tenable long-term response to it. What is more, Africa’s loss of its active and audacious youth will have serious consequences for the continent. This is why the current situation cannot be allowed to continue. It is urgent for governments and civil society in departure and destination countries to come together to organise international mobility. Many of those who have left everything behind them actually want to return to their home country but cannot do so without falling back into the clutches of criminal organisations, police states or totalitarian regimes, or simply losing any hope of coming back again. Yet these people are the vectors of renewal, the actors of future development, much more so than the experts and institutions currently pursuing this objective.

This possibility of moving back and forth has its limitations. There will be restrictions and thus disappointment for some. But it will reduce the role of human traffickers, give new hope to Africa and contain fears in Europe, at least in part, by showing a political desire and a collective capacity to control this phenomenon.

Read more about Humanitarian reasons versus political interests

To cite this content :
Rony Brauman, Humanitarian reasons versus political interests, 11 July 2018, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/camps-refugees-idps/humanitarian-reasons-versus-political-interests

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Humanitarian reasons versus political interests

Les ONG ne sont pas les complices des passeurs

elba.msf — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 12:36:50 +0000

elba.msf Tue, 07/10/2018 - 14:36

Date de publication

10/07/2018

Michaël Neuman & Thierry Allafort-Duverger

Michaël

Neuman

By the same author

Thierry

Allafort-Duverger

Directeur Général MSF France.

By the same author

Opinion column published on 29 June 2018 on Libération's website.

Over the last three weeks, and with total disregard for the lives of thousands or people, European governments have turned the Mediterranean Sea into an arena for sordid political games revolving around the closure of their borders. In the latest episode on 26th June, commenting on a rescue mission carried out by Lifeline, a ship operated by a non-governmental organisation which had been allowed in extremis to disembark in Malta, president Emmanuel Macron accused this NGO of “operating in contravention of all the rules and the Libyan coast guards” and “playing the same game as the smugglers”. He went on to say that it was unacceptable “in the name of humanitarian assistance, to bypass all controls”.

With these few words, all humanitarian aid organisations carrying out rescues at sea were made into the accomplices of human traffickers. This accusation is as absurd as it is unacceptable. NGOs only launch a sea rescue after receiving express instructions from the Italian maritime rescue coordination centre. Emmanuel Macron, like his European colleagues, also forgets to mention that non-governmental operations only rescue a minority of those saved at sea. Most are rescued by the Italian coast guards and passing merchant ships. But European leaders are telling us that rather than encourage migrants to take to the sea in perilous conditions, we should entrust responsibility for sea rescues to the Libyan coast guards - along with coastal surveillance to prevent departures. As Benjamin Grivaux, the French government’s spokesperson, was pleased to announce, “thanks to the investments [made by] France and the European Union with the Libyan authorities, the number of crossings has declined considerably”.

This decline has been obtained at an appalling cost. The Europeans in general, and the French and Italians in particular, have been encouraging the interception at sea, refoulement and detention in Libya of thousands of people who have already endured months, and in some cases years of privation, extortion, torture and slavery in this country. Nobody can claim to be unaware of this ill-treatment. Numerous reports have been published on the subject, including those based on MSF’s work in Libya, and last October CNN broadcast a video of a Libyan slave market. President Macron himself was quick to condemn the Libyan slave trade as a “crime against humanity” the following month.

Since the beginning of 2018, more than 10,000 people have been intercepted and sent back by "Libyan coast guards", a banner under which disparate groups of soldiers and armed militia are operating. These coast guards are trained and financed by the European Union, despite some of them having proven links with human traffickers. On 7 June, the UN Security Council sanctioned six people, four of them Libyan, for operating a human trafficking network - one of them was head of the Libyan coast guard in Zawiya. So, by what tragic miracle, has France - like Italy- suddenly become happy to cooperate - to collude? - with these authorities who we know mistreat migrants and sometimes even traffic them themselves.

Once returned to the detention centres, most of the people intercepted will be faced with a choice that in fact amounts to blackmail: either remain locked up in these rank cages or agree to join the “voluntary return” programme organised by the International Organisation of Migration and be sent back to your country of origin. Some people accept these proposals with relief, others only submit to them to escape the worst. A handful of them benefit from the protection of the High Commission for Refugees and are sent to Niger to await a hypothetical relocation to a European country. But they are a pitifully small minority - just under two hundred since the end of 2017- among the tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Libya. For them, nothing works: there is no registration system worth its salt and the HCR’s activities are extremely limited.

Lastly, some of the people intercepted once more fall into the clutches of criminals who lock them up in make-shift prisons and torture them in the hope of obtaining a ransom from their relatives. In fact, most of the migrants detained in Libya today are being kept in these clandestine prisons where they are treated barbarically and sometimes killed. MSF knows that hundreds of people disappear like this every month from the number of body bags it provides to a local association in the north of Libya.

So, for these people, fleeing is a necessity, not a choice. And NGOs’ sea rescue operations not only save people from drowning, they are evacuating people in situations of immediate danger.

The alternative to sea rescue is not, as Emmanual Macron and Matteo Salvini pretend to believe, to cease these operations. The alternative is to increase our capabilities for saving migrants from the hell in which they have been living so that human traffickers are not their only option. It is to abandon the policy of detention, facilitate asylum applications – accepting the fact that some people simply cannot be repatriated, and accelerate the process of re-locating them to another country, including in Europe.

I wonder what would our president’s mentor, Paul Ricoeur, think of one of his disciples accusing the ambulance driver of being the assailant’s accomplice?

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Michaël Neuman, Thierry Allafort-Duverger, NGOs are not in collusion with smugglers, 10 July 2018, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/publications/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/ngos-are-not-collusion-smugglers

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NGOs are not in collusion with smugglers

L’hospitalité

elba.msf — Thu, 31 May 2018 10:20:15 +0000

Date de publication

31/05/2018

elba.msf Mon, 06/25/2018 - 10:41

hospitality

social mouvement

offence of hospitality

Elba Rahmouni

Elba

Rahmouni

Since April 2018, Elba has been in charge of dissemination at CRASH. Elba holds a Master's degree in History of Classical Philosophy and a Master's degree in editorial consulting and digital knowledge management. During her studies, she worked on moral philosophy issues and was particularly interested in the practical necessity and the moral, legal and political prohibition of lying in Kant's philosophy.

By the same author

Thanks to the migrant crisis, or the reception crisis as it would be more appropriate to call it, the issue of hospitality is back in the forefront. On 17 May, the Maison des Métallos organised a conference with two social science researchers - Michel Agier and Benjamin Boudou - and an NGO manager Cécile PolettiMichel Agier is Director of Studies at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHSS), Director of Research at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and director of the BABELS research programme (EHESS), supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Benjamin Boudou is a researcher in political science at Institut Max-Planck in Göttingen, Germany. He is the author of Politique de l’hospitalité : une généalogie conceptuelle [The Politics of Hospitality : A Conceptual Geneology], Paris, CNRS Editions, 2017, and Le dilemme des frontières : éthique et politique de l’immigration [The Boundary Dilemma : the ethics and politics of immigration] Paris, Editions de l’EHESS, 2018. Cécile Poletti is a national CIMADE delegate for the Île-de-France region.to discuss existing tensions between private hospitality and public hospitality.

The debate approached the notion of hospitality from two different perspectives, one negative - denouncing inhospitality and highlighting the political failures and legal infringements committed by European host countries, and the other positive - describing the relief brought to the distress caused by leaving your home country, being separated from your family, crossing borders and arriving in a new country that will not necessarily accept you. A generic definition of hospitality« Hospitality is an institution that governs the interaction between the person welcoming (to his or her home) and the person who is welcomed (new arrival), consisting in a process of mutual familiarisation (getting to know each other, maintaining a relationship , etc.) », Benjamin Boudou, Politique de l’hospitalité, p.11was shown to be incapable of encompassing such a broad and also problematic notion, as hospitality can be both a duty for citizens (the challenge being to make up for the failures of states) as well as a criminal offence.

Political hospitality - Benjamin Boudou

During the 2017 French presidential campaign, Benoît Hamon asserted that Europe was proving itself incapable of hospitality while Marine le Pen described herself as ‘"tolerant and hospitable’" with people of her choosing. Through this example, Benjamin Boudou demonstrated the plasticity of the word “hospitality” which, when used in a political context, becomes both polysemous and polemical. In his book, Politique de l’hospitalité, he develops the genealogy of hospitality in an attempt to illustrate the politics of hospitality. During the conference, he also sought to demonstrate the existence of a political dimension to a notion which, if it is to be of any value, requires us first to define what is foreignThere is an Eskimo ritual in which strangers exchange slaps with all the members of the tribe. The purpose is to enter into contact with people arriving from elsewhere so as not to fear them..

Benjamin Boudou uses three arguments to demonstrate the complexity of the notion of hospitality: at a moral level, hospitality is scarcely compatible with equality as it demands gratitude; at a political level, it is scarcely compatible with impartiality as it is specific to liberal regimes; and a legal level, it is scarcely compatible with the application of law as it is an exception to justice. To be received by a host is to be confined to the privileged status of guest. The asymmetries specific to hospitality are very difficult to get past and, when they persist, can lead to isolation and alienation. Hence the question of how to get past them…

Risking the offence of hospitality – Cécile Poletti

A family has been prosecuted because the people they were lodging were contributing to the household chores. The Court of Appeal in Aix-en-Provence has given Pierre-Alain Mannoni, lecturer and researcher at the CNRS, a two months suspended sentence for helping three migrant women. According to the court, his objective was not to uphold their dignity; he was considered an activist. In addition to an apparent lack of respect for existing exemptions, the justice system is exploiting other legal texts to condemn people for the offence of hospitality: breach of the peace (especially in cases of expulsions), interfering with air traffic, lacking respect for the Highway Code, forgery, etc.

In her talk, Cécile Poletti explained that the current government has made it quite clear that anyone defying its efforts to control France’s borders will be deemed guilty. Despite adding a few exemptionsIn the Ceseda (Code for Entry and Residence for Foreigners and Rights of Asylum), article L. 622-1 stipulates that « Subject to the exemptions provided for in article L. 622-4, a person who assists or attempts to assist in any direct or indirect manner the illegal/unauthorised entry, circulation or residence of a migrant in France shall be sentenced to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment and a fine of €30,000 ». The law provides for exemption from prosecution under two conditions: if the persons concerned have provided legal advice, food, lodgings or medical care with a view to ensuring decent and dignified living conditions or any other form of assistance intended to uphold dignity and physical integrity, and if they have done so without reward or compensation of any kind, whether direct or indirect., the government has introduced harsher sentences and is not respecting the spirit of European law, according to which a person cannot be sanctioned for helping a migrant for humanitarian reasons.

Diffuse reception as a social movement - Michel Agier

According to Michel Agier, hospitality is conditional in that the right conditions have to be created for it to happen. Beyond the duty of hospitality, and from a practical standpoint, hospitality requires space, time and money… Lodging undocumented people in your home is difficult and exhausting. This explains why, out of 1000 associations working on migrant issues, 250 of them support private hospitality practices. In an individualistic society of which hospitality is no longer a natural part , this support is necessary.

Welcoming someone into your home because you are outraged by the lack of hospitality offered by the state is a political act. In this respect, the diffused reception that exists in all the European countries, especially Denmark and Italy, resembles a social movementFor sociologists, a social movement is a set of informal networks of individual and organisational actors, built on shared values and solidarity and engaged in contentious issues, having recourse to different forms of protest. Della Porta D. and Diani M., Social movements, An introduction.. Because acting "outside the State" poses a problem for the State, and because the State has sovereign authority when it comes to making the laws that apply to its national territory, individuals are inhibited by national territoriality. This being so, how should we go about changing the foreigner’s place in the world? How can we turn the situation around so that foreigners are no longer seen a priori as enemies? It is not possible to unite nations states in crisis, as this would doubtlessly lead to the closing of borders. We should perhaps think in terms of a global citizens movement comparable to the Cop21, which could both escape from and hold sway over States.

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