EU/Turkey: Mass, Fast-Track Returns Threaten Rights - Human Rights Watch‎

Outline Deal Reveals Contradictory Positions on Refugee Protection
(Brussels) – The European Union outline deal with Turkey announced on March 8, 2016 contradicts EU principles guaranteeing the right to seek asylum and against collective expulsions. EU and Turkish leaders meeting in Brussels announced an agreement in principle to stem migration and refugee flows from Turkey to Greece, including massive returns of all “irregular migrants” crossing into the Greek islands from Turkey.

“A fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of the EU-Turkey deal taking shape,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The parties failed to say how individual needs for international protection would be fairly assessed during the rapid-fire mass expulsions they agreed would take place.”

The agreement also says that every Syrian readmitted by Turkey would be offset by a Syrian resettled from Turkey to EU member states. This promise rests on an extremely weak foundation: by mid-January, fewer than 800 refugees had been resettled in Europe under a 2015 commitment by EU governments to resettle 22,500 refugees from various regions by the end of 2017.

Turkey cannot be regarded as a safe country of asylum for refugees from Syria, or for refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other non-European countries, according to a question-and-answer document published by Human Rights Watch in advance of the summit. Turkey has ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, but is the only country in the world to apply a geographical limitation so that only Europeans can get refugee status there. It does not provide effective protection for refugees and has repeatedly pushed asylum seekers back to Syria. - Read More at the HRW
EU/Turkey: Mass, Fast-Track Returns Threaten Rights