The EU’s Operation Sophia Has Failed to Make Conditions Safer for Refugees

By Mollie Gerver

640px-Cavour_550In June 2015 the EU instituted a naval force, the EUNAVFOR MED, to destroy boats used by people smugglers. Two months later, in August 2015, a German vessel rescued a pregnant Somali woman named Rahma Abukar Ali, and she soon gave birth to a baby named Sophia. Sophia’s name spread across the internet, and the EU renamed EUNAVFOR as Operation Sophia, marketed as saving lives, and not only destroying ships.

On 13 May, the UK’s House of Lords EU Committee declared that Operation Sophia, though saving 9,000 lives at sea, has failed to either sufficiently deter smugglers from operating, or to significantly increase the safety of refugees and migrants. Destroying smugglers’ boats led smugglers to switch to using inflatable rubber dinghies, mass-bought from China, which are impossible to ban or easily destroy, and far less safe for refugees crossing the sea. The relatively secure boats used by Sophia’s mother are now less likely to be used because of Operation Sophia. Continue reading “The EU’s Operation Sophia Has Failed to Make Conditions Safer for Refugees”

From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking EU Strategy towards Conflict

ReportCoverA recent publication of likely interest to Euro Crisis in the Press readers is the The Berlin Report of the Human Security Study Group. Entitled ‘From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking EU Strategy towards Conflict’, it was presented to the European External Action Service in Brussels earlier this year.

Study Group convenors: Mary Kaldor and Javier Solana
Coordinator: Iavor Rangelov

The report proposes that the European Union adopts a second generation human security approach to conflicts, as an alternative to Geo-Politics or the War on Terror. Second generation human security takes forward the principles of human security and adapts them to 21st century realities. Continue reading “From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking EU Strategy towards Conflict”