31 March 2011
JRS Malta welcomed the initiative of European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström to ask member states to resettle Eritrean, Somali, Ethiopian and other refugees fleeing Libya.
Valletta, 29 March 2011 - The Jesuit Refugee Service has urged the Maltese government to give special consideration to refugees arriving from Libya whose close family members have already been granted international protection on the island.
Two boats carrying some 500 asylum seekers arrived in Malta yesterday after having reportedly left Libya in the preceding days. The boats are said to have been carrying Somali and Eritrean asylum seekers, many of whom were women and children.
JRS Malta welcomed the initiative of European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström to ask member states to resettle Eritrean, Somali, Ethiopian and other refugees fleeing Libya.
While the Maltese government has already said it would not resettle any refugees currently stranded in Libya, JRS has urged northern Europe countries to step in and help the small island nation.
Responsibility sharing
According to JRS Malta, those who are still trapped in Libya constitute a particularly vulnerable group without any protection. Refugees fleeing the North African country by boat or any other means should be allowed to access protection, the Jesuit NGO stated.
Over the past years, asylum seekers reaching Malta have been allowed access to the refugee determination procedure. JRS lauds this good practice and is confident it will be upheld, JRS said.
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it understood Malta's declaration that it would not offer to resettle sub-Saharan migrants who poured into Egypt and Tunisia when they fled the turmoil in Libya.
Supporting the call by JRS, UNHCR pointed out that Malta's response to the appeal for resettlement solutions did not affect the general obligation to allow access to refugees and asylum seekers approaching its borders in search of safety from war or persecution. In fact, UNHCR urged all states in the region, including Europe, to maintain open borders for all those fleeing Libya.
In a public statement, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, urged European states to adopt a more generous and collegial approach to host some of the persons to whom Malta has rightly accorded international protection.
In addition, he called on the Maltese authorities to move away from a reactive approach to migration and establish a system that is fully in line with European standards concerning the human rights of immigrants and asylum seekers.