What Obama Should Tell the EU on Refugees

Izza Leghtas

Politics, Europe

Europe's governments have a responsibility to solve the refugees and migrant crisis in line with their international obligations.

At the Leader’s Summit on Refugees in September, President Obama urged governments to do more to help the 65 million refugees and displaced people around the world today—the largest number of people driven from their homes by war and conflict since World War II. “History will judge us harshly if we do not rise to this moment,” Obama said at the September summit.

Two months later, as President Obama prepares to visit Greece and Germany, it is clear that countries of the European Union, the world’s richest economic bloc, have not risen to meet this critical challenge. Thousands of asylum-seekers are still stranded in shocking conditions in Greece and a record 4,233 people have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year. The plight of these refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants should be high on the agenda when Obama meets with the German and Greek leaders.

It has been more than seven months since the EU and Turkey agreement entered into force, a controversial agreement established to stem the flow of asylum-seekers and migrants into Europe via Greece. EU leaders have celebrated the agreement as a success, pointing to the significant fall in the number of arrivals: 211,663 people arrived by sea to Greece in October 2015; in October 2016, the numbers dropped to 2,970. But for the men, women and children stranded in cold, unsafe, and unsanitary camps around Greece, Europe has failed spectacularly in dealing with this situation in a humane way.

In April, the European Union provided international organizations working in Greece—including UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, and the International Federation of the Red Cross—with 83 million euros to improve the living conditions of refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants. The EU announced a further EUR 115 million disbursement in September. The contrast between these amounts and the reality on the ground is alarming.