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World Refugee Day: Franzisca Zanker on the outsourcing of asylum procedures to African third countries

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20 June is World Refugee Day. The UNHCR writes:

"It is the day that reminds us that millions of people are forced to leave their homes. The United Nations Refugee Agency publishes the annual "Global Trends" report, which summarises the dramatic situation worldwide in sober figures. At the same time, the UNHCR recognises the strength, courage and resilience that refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless people demonstrate on a daily basis. There are currently 120 million people on the move - the largest number of displaced persons ever recorded."

Franzisca Zanker published her analysis "Outsourcing Asylum to African States? An endeavour destined to fail" on the recently launched platform www.externalizingmigration.info. The platform offers contributions from academics on the topic, in text and video form and as podcasts. 

Franzisca Zanker's contribution looks at the European strategy of outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries and uses previous attempts at cooperation to show that the political interests of African partner countries are not being sufficiently taken into account: 
 

"Rwanda is not the first country to be addressed by European states in the matter of accepting third-country asylum seekers. The current debate is rather the most recent endeavour in an ongoing externalization effort that tries to convince African countries by various carrot and stick methods to take back their own “rejected” nationals, and ideally, even third-country nationals. The difficulty of successful cooperation pinpoints the unlikelihood of outsourcing asylum ever becoming a viable option for potential African partner countries."

Read the full entry here.

New ABI-Working Paper: Ethiopia's interests in the field of EU "return" migration cooperation

Cover ABI-Working Paper zu "Domestic Interests of African States in EUAfrican “Return” Migration Cooperation: A Case Study on the Political Interests of State Actors in Ethiopia"

Since 2015, the EU has been integrating migration into its overall foreign policy through EU-initiated partnership instruments. In 2016, the EU introduced a new approach using negative incentives for partner countries that fail to cooperate with the EU’s migrant return programme. Such approaches, however, have yet to contribute to an increase in returnees, often due to a lack of cooperation by partner countries. 

Building on previous research on the domestic interests of West African states, the case study on Ethiopia by Fikreab Gintamo Gichamo aims to contribute to a better understanding of the prevailing domestic interests in Africa. Based on original interviews with various Ethiopian stakeholders, the paper shows that the country’s engagement with its diaspora and its interest in seeing increased opportunities for legal migration, coupled with a concern for the socio-economic cost of reintegrating returnees, are among critical policy interests. Ethiopian state actors’ domestic interests, in general, are similar to those identified in the West African region, although they do exhibit particular features. For instance, unlike states in West Africa, such as Senegal and Gambia, the country’s officials are not concerned with domestic public opinion. Return agreements or negotiations with the EU have not been an issue of debate in the country’s public sphere or media. Nonetheless, due to the domestic interests identified in this paper, the country’s officials remain reluctant to cooperate with the EU on migrant return.

You can find the ABI Working Paper here.

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