Calais migrants: NGO sees no early end to crisis

(Vatican Radio) Human rights activists say the migrant situation at Calais in northern France needs a structural solution, instead of politicians portraying the migrants as an invasion or threat that need to be pushed away. Several thousand migrants coming from nations like Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan and elsewhere are camped out in the Calais area and each night try to break through police lines and fencing in a desperate bid to reach Britain through the Channel Tunnel.

Marie Martin is the Migration and Asylum Programme Officer for EuroMed Rights, a European network of human rights organisations that supports efforts to give migrants and refugees a voice. She says the situation facing migrants in the French town is a humanitarian and sanitary crisis and the political reaction so far to it is “very regretful and worrying.”

Listen to the interview with Marie Martin of EuroMed Rights: 

Martin points out that the number of migrants currently in Calais is actually not that large and represents “a very tiny proportion” of the total immigration flows each year to many EU nations. She said “it’s time the EU lived up to its principals” and international obligations, especially as many of these migrants have fled from war-torn countries and therefore should be considered as refugees.

Martin said we urgently “need more capacities” to receive these migrants properly “rather than pushing them away” or “building fences.”  She also criticized political leaders on both sides of the channel for portraying this migrants crisis in Calais “as a threat” or as “an invasion” and said British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent remarks about “swarms of migrants” coming across the Mediterranean was “a shocking statement coming from a world leader” because it was “extremely dehumanizing.” The situation needs “a structural solution,” Martin said, because these migrants “have no other choice but to come.”