Refugees need rescuing

Up to 400 refugees have died in the Mediterranean already this year, vastly more than the total by this time last year. The latest tragedy, referred to by Pope Francis in his Wednesday address to pilgrims in St Peter’s Square, happened when four rubber dinghies overturned on their journey from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Earlier, more than 100 migrants had been picked up by Italian coastguard vessels. Around 30 are said to have died from hypothermia in what were reported to be appalling weather conditions. This is not the ideal season for crossing the Mediterranean in a small boat.

This latest tragedy gives the lie to the standard explanation offered last year as to why European governments were refusing to finance the successful humanitarian rescue patrols organised by the Italian navy, which has since been curtailed. It was said, according to official spokespeople in various capitals including London, that offering the prospect of rescue was acting as a “pull factor”, encouraging more migrants to take their chances in unseaworthy boats organised by ruthless gangs of people smugglers. The suggestion was that withdrawing or scaling back the rescue services to a bare minimum, confining it for instance to the Italian coast, would dissuade migrants from taking the risk. For that to work, of course, some would first have to die.

What has happened since proves that death by drowning or exposure does not act as a deterrent to desperate people. They may well have braved similar perils on their land journey to their port of departure. The notion of a pull factor, an utterly cynical proposition at best, was not unlike the theory propounded before the Second World War that admitting Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany only encouraged the Nazis to persecute them more, and hence, for their own good, they should be turned away.

The problem with a utilitarian calculation of the greatest good of the greatest number, which is what the EU’s approach amounted to, is that it gives no absolute value to human life. It accepts that a few may have to die, to save the many. It is true that every European government has a problem with immigration, but such a drastic response cannot be warranted under any circumstances. Instead, the countries of the EU – and not just those with a Mediterranean coastline – should see that proper rescue patrols are adequately financed. They should ensure that the burden of coping with the influx of refugees should be shared out fairly across Europe and not left to the countries where migrants first land, whether by their own efforts or aboard rescue vessels. This would be a proper use for some of the funding for overseas aid and development, with which the British Government has so far been generous. The British contribution to settling refugees from Syria, on the other hand, has been pathetic. To the end of last year the total was only about a hundred.

Many of those who attempt the crossing are fleeing from countries such as Syria and Iraq, where war and persecution have made civilised life all but impossible. But no effective mechanism exists for them to claim the asylum to which they are legally entitled until they have reached European soil. That is the biggest pull factor of all.