This text first appeared as a Fieldnote from Lampedusa on the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) webpage and is re-posted here. Antonio De Lauri is a Senior Researcher at CMI and co-Director of the NCHS.

Lampedusa, 9 October 2019.

A simple, moving ceremony for the people who died at sea on October 7, 2019 took place today in the small island of Lampedusa. Only a few days ago Lampedusa commemorated the anniversary of the tragegy that occured on October 3, 2013 when over 360 persons lost their lives in the Mediterranean waters after the fishing boat that was transporting around 500 people began sinking a few hundred metres from the coast. Thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean Sea in the past few years in the attempt to reach Europe. What happened two days ago was only the most recent episode in this human-made, ongoing catastrophe.

According to the latest figures, at least 40 people lost their lives on October 7, including an infant who was born on the boat during the trip, and many are still missing. All the 13 bodies that have been initially pulled out of the sea were women. Only four of them have been identified by the 21 survivors.

Raised anchor in Sfax, the boat got into trouble a few miles from the coast of Lampedusa. The engine stopped working properly, and water started flooding into the bottom of the boat where a group of Sub-Saharan women were sitting with their children. The boat capsized when approached by the coast guard, pouring all the Sub-Saharans and Tunisians onboard in the water. Two Tunisian guys told me that, right before the boat capsized, they have been able to through a pregnant woman on the coast guard vessel. In the dark water, they said, it was chaos. “People who could not swim tried to grab us. They can pull you down, they make you drown,” one of them said. “The only thing you can do is to swim away and reach the vessel.” 

A sense of loss pervaded today’s ceremony. Not only for the persons who didn’t make, but also for the idea of Europe, itself drowned with those who believed in it. 

The anthropologist Laura Nader once asked: “Is there anything more fundamental to what makes humans human than ideas of right or wrong?” That is a good question. Every discussion about migration, borders and refugees seems to be dominated by pragmatic approaches: Is it convenient, in economic terms, for Europe to welcome high numbers of migrants? Are they really “high numbers”? Are protectionist national regulations in conflict with international law? Who is legally responsible for the boats filled with migrants in need of help in the Mediterranean? These are pertinent questions. Yet, they don’t address the core issue, which is rather a matter of right and wrong. I struggle with the thought of how anyone with a basic moral attitude towards humanity can think that it is right that some people have passports and are free to move around while others don’t even have a passport (or have a passport that “doesn’t count” in the international mobility) and are denied this basic right.

Open borders is the only possible answer to the current dismantling of the European project and, more profoundly, of ideals of solidarity, fraternity and equality. We need open borders simply because it is the right thing to do. It should not be contingent on an analysis of pros and cons, or on considerations of an economic, legal and political nature. The arrogant and violent language of a transnational class of political figures, the tyranny of financial capitalism, the disintegration of socialist ideologies, and the rising of a vulnerable underclass at the European level has transformed a matter of right and wrong into a battle among the poor. “Migrants steal our jobs”, “They receive more benefits than us”, “Italians first” (tragically reproducing Donald Trump’s deplorable motto “America first”). These discourses signal the victory of dominant classes over the subalterns. Local populations in hotspot locations like Lampedusa have shown great solidarity in the past years, often against the will of national governments. But anti-migrant sentiments seem to prevail all over Europe at this point in history. Qualitative studies have extensively demonstrated that irregular migration is a huge business for those in power and for criminal organizations. Whoever today reiterates ideologies of closed borders that hinders mobility becomes complicit in a business whose profit is made from human suffering and human exploitation.

It is always illuminating to try to explain complex things in simple ways. Now, try to explain the politics of borders to a child. How can we explain to a child that some people, who are in dire need, cannot cross a border to enjoy refuge and care in search for a better life? Unscrupolous pragmatists would say that you do that by explaining the child that we have to protect “us” first, that we have to secure jobs for ourselves first, and that this is “our land”. I have deep concerns about who that child will be tomorrow.

A simple, moving ceremony for the people who died at sea on October 7, 2019 took place today in the small island of Lampedusa. Only a few days ago Lampedusa commemorated the anniversary of the tragegy that occured on October 3, 2013 when over 360 persons lost their lives in the Mediterranean waters after the fishing boat that was transporting around 500 people began sinking a few hundred metres from the coast. Thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean Sea in the past few years in the attempt to reach Europe. What happened two days ago was only the most recent episode in this human-made, ongoing catastrophe. According to the latest figures, at least 30 people lost their lives on October 7 and 17 are still missing. All the 13 bodies that have been pulled out of the sea were women. Only four of them have been identified by the 22 survivors.

The boat got into trouble a few kilometres from the coast. The boat’s engine stopped working properly, and water started flooding into the bottom of the boat where a group of Sub-Saharan women who had boarde in Libya were sitting with their children (a group of around 15 Tunisians had joined later in Sfax).

A sense of loss pervaded today’s ceremony. Not only for the persons who didn’t make, but also for the idea of Europe, itself drowned with those who believed in it.  

The anthropologist Laura Nader once asked: “Is there anything more fundamental to what makes humans human than ideas of right or wrong?” That is a good question. Every discussion about migration, borders and refugees seems to be dominated by pragmatic approaches: Is it convenient, in economic terms, for Europe to welcome high numbers of migrants? Are they really “high numbers”? Are protectionist national regulations in conflict with international law? Who is legally responsible for the boats filled with migrants in need of help in the Mediterranean? These are pertinent questions. Yet, they don’t address the core issue, which is rather a matter of right and wrong. I struggle with the thought of how anyone with a basic moral attitude towards humanity can think that it is right that some people have passports and are free to move around while others don’t even have a passport (or have a passport that “doesn’t count” in the international mobility) and are denied this basic right.

Open borders is the only possible answer to the current dismantling of the European project and, more profoundly, of ideals of solidarity, fraternity and equality. We need open borders simply because it is the right thing to do. It should not be contingent on an analysis of pros and cons, or on considerations of an economic, legal and political nature. The arrogant and violent language of a transnational class of political figures, the tyranny of financial capitalism, the disintegration of socialist ideologies, and the rising of a vulnerable underclass at the European level has transformed a matter of right and wrong into a battle among the poor. “Migrants steal our jobs”, “They receive more benefits than us”, “Italians first” (tragically reproducing Donald Trump’s deplorable motto “America first”). These discourses signal the victory of dominant classes over the subalterns. Local populations in hotspot locations like Lampedusa have shown great solidarity in the past years, often against the will of national governments. But anti-migrant sentiments seem to prevail all over Europe at this point in history. Qualitative studies have extensively demonstrated that irregular migration is a huge business for those in power and for criminal organizations. Whoever today reiterates ideologies of closed borders that hinders mobility becomes complicit in a business whose profit is made from human suffering and human exploitation.

It is always illuminating to try to explain complex things in simple ways. Now, try to explain the politics of borders to a child. How can we explain to a child that some people, who are in dire need, cannot cross a border to enjoy refuge and care in search for a better life? Unscrupolous pragmatists would say that you do that by explaining the child that we have to protect “us” first, that we have to secure jobs for ourselves first, and that this is “our land”. I have deep concerns about who that child will be tomorrow.

This text is based on an op-ed which was first published in Norwegian in Aftenposten 19 November 2019: Å hinder redningsskipenes arbeid vil ikke redde flere migranter. It has been translated by Fidotext and published on the PRIO blog, and is re-published here.

The Norwegian-registered vessel Ocean Viking, operated by Médecins Sans Frontières, has recently been at the centre of a debate that has become dominated by one assumption: that search-and-rescue (SAR) operations are encouraging people to attempt to cross the Mediterranean.

The logic is problematic for several reasons, and I will try to address some of them: 1) the statistics suggest otherwise; 2) it ignores the wider picture – that a range of complex factors drive people to flee their homes, with some heading towards the Mediterranean; and 3) the theory is being used to legitimize non-rescue of boats in distress.

A temptingly simple explanation

The logic has a name, the pull factor – in other words, that SAR operations contribute to “pull” more people to attempt the crossing. The power of this idea lies partly in how it provides a simple and apparently clear-cut explanation for a complex problem — a problem that we otherwise have a hard time understanding, and even harder time addressing. It is also powerful because it is difficult to refute: it is hard to know exactly what makes people decide to embark on this dangerous sea crossing, and there are probably as many reasons as there are refugees and other migrants.

Old rhetoric

In 2004, Erna Solberg, then Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, argued against a local initiative in Trondheim, which sought to provide food and accommodation to asylum seekers lacking refugee status. Solberg claimed that the initiative would “in practice mean unfettered immigration by people from the Horn of Africa”. Today the idea that any measure intended to ensure a minimum level of subsistence for refugees or other migrants will help “pull” more people in the same direction pervades European policy on migration, from Greece and France to Norway.

The pull factor and SAR operations

In particular, the legacy of Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum has served to boost the pull-factor theory about SAR missions in the Mediterranean. Mare Nostrum was established in response to a major shipwreck off Lampedusa in October 2013, which was described by high-ranking EU politicians and the Italian president as a “shame” for Europe. Mare Nostrum was run by the Italian navy as a “military-humanitarian” operation. The number of refugees and other migrants who attempted to make the crossing had already begun to rise before the operation started, and even while Mare Nostrum was saving tens of thousands of lives at sea, the numbers continued to rise.

Critics quickly concluded that the increase was linked to the presence of the SAR operation, and that Mare Nostrum was directly and indirectly encouraging more people to make the crossing. This allegation, which was seen at the time as controversial, has nonetheless become almost conventional wisdom in today’s policy-making.

What do the numbers tell us?

Several researchers have examined the statistical relationship between the numbers of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean and SAR capacity. One study, conducted by Elias Steinhilper and Rob Gruitjers, looks at the period between late 2013 and 2017. They divide this period into three periods: an initial period with high SAR capacity (October 2013 – October 2014); a subsequent period with low SAR capacity following the launch of the Frontex-led Operation Triton (November 2014 – May 2015); and a third period with high SAR capacity (Triton II with increased SAR capacity, plus more vessels operated by NGOs). The numbers of people crossing the Mediterranean began to increase before Mare Nostrum was implemented, and continued to increase after it was shut down and throughout the period of low SAR capacity. In fact, the numbers increased most sharply during the period of low SAR capacity, rather than during the two periods with high SAR capacity. This same period also saw the sharpest increase in the number of drownings, compared with the periods before and after.

Another, still ongoing, study conducted by Matteo Villa at ISPI in Milan, is examining the number of migrants leaving Libya in 2019 compared with the availability of SAR vessels on the actual dates the migrants’ boats left shore. The findings show that the likelihood of boats leaving Libya is not affected by the availability of SAR vessels, but rather by wind and weather conditions. Figures from the IOM and UNHCR show that so far this year, on average, 31 migrants leave shore on days when SAR vessels are operating, against 41 migrants on days with no SAR vessels.

A narrow perspective

Even while these figures sow doubt about the existence of any direct link, it is important to point out that the theory itself, assuming that the availability of x number of SAR vessels affects the number of people attempting the sea crossing, is built on a problematic premise. The thinking is based on a very narrow perspective, which views SAR vessels as a unique factor in a world where the availability of more or fewer SAR vessels is the sole factor influencing an apparently inexhaustible number of migrants ready to attempt the crossing. The wider picture, with its multiple factors that either hinder migration or make it possible or necessary for people to leave their homes, is too complex to understand and too difficult to do anything about. This line of thinking posits NGOs’ activities as the simple explanation for an otherwise incomprehensible situation, and thereby also the factor that needs to be addressed in order to resolve the situation.

Humanitarian rhetoric used to legitimize not saving lives

The main problem with this hypothesis however is not only that it appears to be unfounded and based on a narrow perspective, but that it is being used to legitimize both the closed ports and an active policy of not coming to the rescue of vessels in distress. There is in fact a duty, enshrined in the international law of the sea, to provide assistance to vessels in distress and take the rescued to a safe harbour.

Regardless of one’s political standing, it is no easy matter to argue against saving lives at sea. That is also why many of those advancing this argument. are trying to prove that SAR operations will “entice” more people to attempt the crossing, and thereby putting more migrants at greater risk. As such, the policy of non-rescue is presented as a policy that protects more people from drowning.

But hindering the operations of SAR vessels will not save the lives of more migrants, and it will also not address the complex causes of displacement and migration.

Sean McDonald argues that the humanitarian sector has much to offer the technology industry, and explores the relationship between the two. This article first appeared on Centre for International Governance Innovation, and is reposted here.

About the author: Sean Martin McDonald is the co-founder of Digital Public, which builds legal trusts to protect and govern digital assets. Sean’s research focuses on civic data trusts as vehicles that embed public interest governance into digital relationships and markets.

Over the summer, the World Food Programme (WFP) — the world’s largest humanitarian organization — got into a pitched standoff with Yemen’s Houthi government over, on the surface, data governance. That standoff stopped food aid to 850,000 people for more than two months during the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Essentially, the WFP accused the Houthi government of redirecting aid to fund the war and insisted that aid recipients participate in a biometric identity-tracking system. The government responded by accusing the WFP of being a front for intelligence operations; this was opportune, given the recent controversy over their relationship with Palantir. In the end, the parties agreed to use the WFP’s fingerprint-based biometric identity system, despite reported flaws. The dispute, of course, wasn’t just about data — it was about power, trust and the licence to operate.  

While they may seem worlds apart, the humanitarian sector has much to offer to the technology industry. One of the things humanitarians and technologists have in common is an extraordinary power to operate. For humanitarians, power takes the form of an internationally agreed-upon right to intervene in conflicts – for some, with legal immunity. And technology companies have the ability to project themselves into global markets without the need for traditional government approval.

In one sense, they’re opposites. Humanitarians have had to meticulously negotiate the conditions of their access to conflict zones, based on non-intervention principles, the terms of host country agreements with governments and, increasingly, data-sharing agreements. In contrast, technology companies have mostly enjoyed the freedom to operate globally without much negotiation, taxation or regulation of any type. But, in recent years (as illustrated by the WFP example) humanitarian organizations are starting to face the political and regulatory implications of collecting, using, storing, sharing and deleting data. Technology companies, it seems, are following the same path; they face significant public pushback from nearly every corner of the world, from international standards bodies and antitrust investigations to privacy fines and class action lawsuits.

Humanitarian organizations have considerable history and experience negotiating for the licence to operate in political and unstable contexts – which should inform the people and companies designing data governance systems. Here are five places to start:

Licence to Operate

Humanitarians and technology companies can, and sometimes do, operate in places where the government is actively resistant to their presence. While the stakes are often lower for technology companies, the costs involved in negotiating licence to operate country-by-country, and the technical complexity of maintaining product offerings compatible with divergent political contexts, are high. As a result, most technology companies launch offerings, and then react to, or defend against governmental and public concerns. That approach is decidedly opportunist, sacrificing long-term goodwill for short-term gains. Humanitarian organizations have extensive debates around their right to access affected populations, and under what conditions they earn that mandate. One thing humanitarians can teach technology companies is the importance of contextual negotiations and compromise to improve medium-term sustainability and long-term growth.

The Political Complexity of Neutrality

The technology industry has become a popular political scapegoat, often coming under fire for all kinds of bias. Technology companies arbitrate complex social, commercial and political processes, some without any dedicated operational infrastructure. The larger companies have built trust and safety teams, content moderation units of varying types, and online dispute resolution systems — all of which are designed to help users solve problems related to platforms’ core functions. Each of these approaches has grown significantly in recent years, but largely to mitigate damage created by the technology sector itself – and often without transparency or the ability to shape rules.

Humanitarian organizations, in contrast, are defined by their commitment to several core, apolitical principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, independence and to do no harm. The major humanitarian organizations have built organizations and reputations for upholding those values, often amid violent conflict, that scale globally. The technology industry, and in particular those seeking the licence to provide public digital services or to govern public data — has a significant amount to learn from the organizational structure of complex humanitarian operations. 

Federation

Federation is an organizational structure that manages common infrastructure and operational hierarchies. Federation is second nature to technology companies when it comes to code, but they are just learning how to federate and devolve their organizational structures. Humanitarian organizations have been working through devolved, federated organizational structures for decades — the International Federation of the Red Cross, for example. There is a natural, and well-documented tension between independence and upholding common standards across networks – especially in technology systems. Yet, humanitarian organizations have built federated organizations that enable them to operate globally, while availing themselves of the two most important aspects of building trust: investment in local capacity and accountability.

Localization

In addition to negotiating a licence to operate with governments, humanitarian organizations often invest in domestic response capacity, and in recent years, localization has become a driving strategic imperative. Humanitarians increasingly realize they need to offer value beyond direct emergency aid, in order to foster more durable solutions and earn the trust of communities. Technology companies often make their products available internationally — and they often invest in countries where they maintain a physical presence, but they rarely set up a presence for the purposes of investing in local communities or in ways that extend beyond their business interests. Technology organizations looking to build trust and public approval in the ways they govern data could learn from the humanitarian sector’s investments in local capacity, resilience and independence.

Accountability

While the humanitarian sector faces a lot of controversy over accountability, their typical operating practice is to engage in direct negotiations with local parties, which is different than technology companies, who generally start with one set of terms they apply globally.  The default terms of the technology industry’s cardinal data governance contracts — terms of service agreements and privacy policies — enable them to unilaterally change the terms of the agreement. It’s impossible to rely on the terms of a contract that can change at the whim of one party – or when the underlying goes bankrupt or gets acquired. The actors within the technology industry seeking public trust in the way they manage data can learn from the humanitarian sector about the need for credible parity between negotiating parties and distributed accountability.

The good news is that the humanitarian sector and the technology industry are well on their way to forming deep alliances; the heads of several major humanitarian organizations have placed private sector coordination and co-creation at the centre of their strategies. The World Economic Forum is laying the foundation for private companies to participate in international governance bodies. And, private foundations and investors increasingly play a role in shaping response efforts. 

Unfortunately, these relationships may be a double-edged sword. Technology companies can take advantage of humanitarian organizations’ unique licence to operate to work in regulated spaces, test new products without repercussions and even justify the creation of invasive surveillance. This new generation of relationships between the humanitarian organizations and technology companies offer opportunities for each group to learn from the other’s structural solutions on problems relating to shared issues of trust, neutrality and global scale. Let’s hope that the technology industry chooses to learn from the organizations that have spent the last century building, testing and scaling organizational structures to deliver the best of humanity.

Gunnar M. Sørbø is a social anthropologist, former director of the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), and former Chair of the Board of the NCHS.

This text is based on an op-ed which was first published in Norwegian in Bergens Tidende, 5 May 2019: Europas nye grensevakter.

Are we supporting a development which ultimately sends even more refugees towards Europe?

More than a million migrants crossed the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach Europe during the 2015 refugee crisis, the vast majority arriving either in Greece or Italy. The following year the European Union entered the so-called “EU-Turkey Deal”, a statement of cooperation between European states and the Turkish government. The agreement was meant to ensure that migrants and refugees arriving in Turkey, most of whom were fleeing Syria, would remain there, and that migrants making it to Greece would be returned to Turkey.

From a European perspective, the agreement with Turkey has been successful. Only about 360.000 migrants and refugees arrived by sea in 2016. The arrivals were distributed quite evenly between Greece and Italy, the two European countries that received most of the migrants leaving Northern Africa. To ensure that the flow of people would be further reduced, the EU as well as several singular European countries made similar bilateral agreements with Libya, and later with countries in the Sahel region south of Libya: Sudan, Niger and Chad.

Norway is among the European countries which has intensified its focus on the region over the past few years. As with other countries, the motivation behind the increased support has not been limited to stopping large-scale migration, but also to stop the spread of Islamic terrorism. This type of terrorism affected Norwegians directly in 2013 when an attack on the Norwegian energy company Statoil’s gas facility in Algeria resulted in the loss of Norwegian lives.

In Libya, the EU made an agreement with the government in Tripoli. At the time, the Libyan authorities had limited territorial control and depended on various militias for survival. Presently, they are fighting the forces of General Khalifa Haftar, who is based in the eastern part of Libya and is supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Libya has faced political destabilization since the former head of state Gaddafi lost power and was killed in 2011.

Thus, Italy suggested to create checkpoints along the border in southern Libya, an area controlled by militias often in conflict with each other. The countries south of Libya also tend to have problems controlling their border regions, yet authoritarian heads of state have promised to exercise migration control in exchange for much needed financial support from Europe.

This type of “outsourcing” means that Europe has become entangled with some unusual border guards that are difficult to control.

In Sudan, the task of controlling migration has to a large extent been handed to militias allied with the regime in Khartoum. These are the same armed groups that were responsible for excessive use of force displacing large groups of people from their homes during the Darfur crisis of 2003-2004. They patrol the border to Libya claiming to stop migrants from travelling north, while simultaneously smuggling people into Libya in cooperation with actors on the other side of the border.

The same armed forces (Rapid Support Forces – RSF) have also been active at the border between Sudan and Eritrea. Studies conducted through a joint effort by universities in Sudan and the Chr. Michelsen’s Institute/The University of Bergen show that migrants from Eritrea, Syria and other countries continue to journey through Sudan. However, the migrants are paying a higher price than before, taking new routes, and doing so at a greater risk.

While Sudan has received support from the EU for “managing” migration, the regime’s brutal policies and the country’s wrecked economy are contributing to a steady flow of Sudanese people wanting to leave their own country. In 2014-2016, 9,300 Sudanese arrived in Italy, and in 2017, twenty per cent of those granted political asylum in France came from Sudan.

A report from the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands (“Multilateral Damage”, 2018) confirms some of the tendencies we have observed in Sudan. Firstly, new migration routes have emerged, more dangerous and secretive than before, and therefore also more expensive and criminalized. The total number of migrants making the journey has decreased, but evidence suggests that the number of migrant deaths has increased.

Secondly, the overall stability in these countries is threatened as the number of ungovernable militia groups grow. Some of these armed groups profit from stopping migrants, others from smuggling migrants northwards, and a considerable number practice both. In Niger, the ban on migration has disturbed the fragile balance that was established when the Tuareg and Tubu rebels in the northern part of the country entered a peace accord with the government.

The local economy has deteriorated, and new militias have emerged in the border regions. A common denominator for all these countries is that armed groups outside of the state’s control are becoming more powerful and constituting a security threat.

Political developments in Sudan during April and May 2019 have led the RSF leader Hemetti to power as second-in-command in the Transitional Military Council (TMC), now participating in talks with the protesters about a new government. In Libya, both parties in the war for the capital Tripoli are depending on alliances with militias. Many of them are keeping migrants and refugees in custody and subjecting them to torture and extortion, before a small number – barely 500 in the first three months of this year – gets transported en route to Europe.

In a desperate plea for help from the EU, the Libyan Prime Minister is threatening that up to 800,000 people will cross the Mediterranean if Libya were to face political collapse. This is most likely an overstatement, as there are probably not that many refugees and migrants wishing to reach Europe from Libya right now, and because transportation by sea is arranged by mafia-like organizations that may be dissolved if the political chaos in the country is amplified. Nevertheless, the prime minister’s statement speaks volumes about the vulnerability of the agreements that have been made.

Most European countries are aware of the risks associated with “externalizing” border control, but across Europe the field of migration is characterized by realpolitik. Lowering the number of migrants and asylum seekers reaching Europe has become the overarching objective.

We are seemingly becoming less concerned with the policies’ unintended consequences. This is probably caused by European migration policies claiming to answer all our concerns: not just migration, but also security, political stability and terrorism – based on the assumption that human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms dealings and terrorism are driven by a conglomerate of mafia-like organizations and that these are hurting local communities in the affected regions.

However, most people involved in migrant smuggling do not view themselves as criminals, and their activities may also create positive ripple effects in many local communities across border regions. 

Before the overthrow of Gaddafi, when many migrants from other African countries went to work in Libya, assisting migrants was part of the formal economy. Now, the practice is considered criminal. This may result in participants formerly engaged with assisting migrants moving their affairs elsewhere, for instance into activities eroding the state’s control such as revolt and terrorism.

Many European politicians probably recognize that the agreements that are being made strengthen forces we would rather not be associated with, whether this is an increasingly authoritarian president in Turkey or militia groups in the Sahel region. Yet, the question we must ask ourselves is whether this policy is sustainable in the long run. I am here thinking not only of the immense human suffering caused by such policies, but also whether we are supporting a development which will ultimately push even more people in the direction of Europe.

Dorothea Hilhorst argues that it is necessary for development practitioners and academics to investigate our own flying habits. This article first appeared on The ISS Blog on Global Development and Social Justice and is re-posted here.

Flying is an important contributor to global warming, and by far one of the most complicated. There are no signs that flying will be reduced and technical solutions to reduce carbon emissions are a long way off and not very feasible. Unlike cars, electric planes are not an option—flying a plane would require its entire space to be filled with batteries.

The IPCC report that came out last week is absolutely terrifying. The possibility of retaining global heating within 1.5 degrees is rapidly disappearing and we are facing global warming of 2 or even 3 degrees. The report contains convincing evidence of the devastation of that extra degree on biodiversity, sea level rise, disaster events, the economy, coral reefs, and so on.

With regards to flying, governments should get their acts together and start taxing air travel, while investing in alternatives, especially a huge expansion of fast train networks. But in the meantime, I think organisations and their employees should also take some level of responsibility.

The IPCC report comes out in the midst of a scandal over the irresponsible ‘flying behaviour’ of Erik Solheim, the director of the United Nations Environment Programme, who travels 80% of his time. In the coverage of the scandal, most attention centred on his flying for private purposes. This reflects a general view that private flying is a luxury, but business-related travel is just what needs to be done. But is that really true? I’m pretty sure that huge cuts could easily be made in business-related air travel.

There is now a call for environmental guidelines within the UN.  What, only now? Shocking, right? But let’s be honest, the whole aid and development world—the UN, NGOs, and my own world of  academic departments and development studies—is shamefully late in taking responsibility. For decades, I have not given my flying behaviour much thought either, and found it normal or at best a necessary evil to hop on a plane for every piece of research, conference or seminar.

I will not go into name-shaming, but I know for a fact that some of the front runner developmental institutes and think tanks are not using carbon offsetting for their flights, and have no policy on reducing air travel. Since a few years back, I have tried to reduce my own air travel. I still have an oversized ecological footprint, but I fly significantly less than I used to.

I also—cautiously—try to bring up the topic in conversations with people I work with.  Here some experiences:

1) When preparing a lecture at a development institute in the UK: “Sorry, we are short on budget this year, would you mind taking the plane rather than the train?”

2) A director of a development department in the Netherlands: “Sorry, we are too busy. We will consider introducing a policy next year”.

3) A consultant coming over for an assignment: “Really, is there now a train connecting London to Amsterdam in less than four hours? I didn’t know”.

Two further defences are that people start laughing when I raise this issue, because they consider air travel to be at the core of who we are; or that they point at real polluters, usually big business or an American president. Good points, but my reading of the IPCC report is that all of us need to step up the effort: governments, business, institutions, employees and consumers.

I also know many people that refuse to carbon offset because some offset programmes are open to criticism, or because they find this tokenistic. However, offsetting is a first step. While the IPCC focuses on the devastation of future temperature rises, it is absolutely clear that climate change is already wreaking havoc, especially for poor people in poor countries.

More droughts, floods, fires. More hunger, poverty, and distress migration. It is a core principle in environmental politics that polluters should pay. There are a number of offset schemes that take this into account and use the money they generate for programs that combine livelihoods with mitigation of carbon emission, for example by protecting the vast peat areas in the world that contain huge levels of carbon. If only for this reason, a simple measure such as offsetting every flight you take should not be too much to ask.

But compensation programmes can only ever be a first small step. Next comes sharply reducing the number of flights we take.

Of course, there are already signs of these changes, and best practices are rapidly evolving. I have the feeling that NGOs may be ahead of the game compared to universities and research institutes. We academics may even be worse than the United Nations or some companies. Some obvious things we could do:

• Some NGOs (like Oxfam – see below) have ruled that travel below xx hours cannot use air travel. I have not yet heard of a single university that sets such rules.
• No more face-to-face job interviews, where applicants are invited to fly in so that the personal chemistry can be tested.
• Organise international conferences of study associations every three or four years rather than every year.
• Get used to teaching and seminars through Skype.
• Introduce a rule that planes must be booked well in advance to avoid that the only available or affordable ticket comes with three stops and huge detours.
• Invest more in identifying and fostering local experts to avoid international consultancies.

I’m sure there are plenty more examples, and would love to hear suggestions. Taxing carbon use and investing in green transport systems like fast trains will definitely help to reduce air travel. What we really need, though, is a change of mentality. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Let’s get ready for an era where flying is the new smoking. It won’t be long before people who fly have some awkward explaining to do over the Friday afternoon drinks after work.

This post first appeared on “ALNAP” and is re-posted here.

In the wake of the scandal in Haiti revolving around sexual misconduct by Oxfam staff in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake, the aid sector is now engaging in ‘safeguarding’ exercises. While initially based on a UK legal definition that applied to vulnerable adults and children, safeguarding has acquired a broader meaning, which includes all actions by aid actors to protect staff from harm (abuse, sexual harassment and violence) and to ensure staff do not harm beneficiaries. However, despite good intentions, I suggest that the safeguarding response has some problematic qualities which need to be discussed. Here I will focus on two:

Formulating inclusive and informed safeguarding

First, as we move from arguments for the legitimacy of safeguarding initiatives, to a discussion of the legitimacy of how they are implemented, there has been vocal concern about the lack of inclusivity to this extent. Critics have noted that a “safeguarding industry was hatched, and experts magically appeared and promises of change were made’ with little attention to local and national contexts or participation.

These types of objections speak to the sector’s long-standing struggle with bottom-up accountability. The view that safeguarding is yet another Western-centric practice, and frustrated complaints about the absence of meaningful field participation and local consultations when formulating safeguarding approaches, need to be taken seriously and addressed carefully – with the cognisance that the underlying issues of discontent go much beyond safeguarding.

However, I think we need to be clear that technical and ‘programming’ conversations around safeguarding also expose difficult and normally ‘hidden’ contestations over privilege, power and race. Where long-standing struggles of women of colour in aid crash head-on into the whiteness of the Me Too movement, the whiteness of ‘humanitarian feminism’ and the whiteness of the sector more generally. Here I think the sector – including reform minded individuals – could be more honest about who is around the table and why, and display a greater willingness to engage: this type of conversation is and will be uncomfortable – but if we want to go anywhere with safeguarding, so be it.

Establishing clarity not de facto criminalisation

The second issue pertains to the inherent vagueness and malleability of the concept. While problems in the sector are frequently attributed to a ‘lack of clear definition’ of an emerging challenge, something else seems to be at play here.  At its core, the idea of safeguarding is to reinforce the humanitarian imperative to Do No Harm, by preventing ‘sexual abuse and exploitation’. Humanitarians have long been concerned about this and tried to do something about it. For decades, sexual exploitation has been considered the worst possible behaviour humanitarian workers can be guilty of, but it has perhaps not been quite so clear what constitutes exploitation and which relationships exploitation takes place in.

Previously too many behaviours and relationships were left out of the equation for behavioural mores in the sector – but are we on the road to leaving too many in today? Is safeguarding at risk of becoming some sort of moral trojan horse that implants new social and political struggles into the humanitarian space?

I am here particularly thinking about transactional sex. The interpretation of what safeguarding means is also shaped by changing cultural perceptions of transactional sex and prostitution, primarily in the Global North. While the Me Too campaign is of very recent date, it links up with a more longstanding trend in big donor countries, namely the de facto criminalisation of prostitution by criminalising the buyer. Whereas Codes of Conduct have been promoted as a key mechanism for governing the sexual behaviour of humanitarian workers, the act of buying sex is increasingly construed legally and ideologically as a criminal practice.

In my view, this is possibly the most difficult field of social practice covered by safeguarding, and where it is vital to think carefully so that one can navigate the fine line between justifiable moral censure and moralistic outrage. Is moralistic outrage necessarily a bad thing? The view appears to be emerging that paying for sex, anywhere and at any time, is incompatible with being a ‘good’ humanitarian worker and dependable employee; the distinction between paying for sex and exploiting someone for sex is being erased.

While buying sex in the 1980s, for example, appears to have been a fairly common practice in the aid world (broadly defined), much of the moral indignation previously linked to prostitution and aid was linked to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the fact that buying sex helped spread the epidemic at home and abroad. Today, in such donor countries as Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden, buying sex is illegal and is punished with fines or prison sentences. At the same time, criminalisation remains extremely controversial, and the extent of this controversy is perhaps getting lost as the abolitionist approach travels to the humanitarian space.

Global prostitution activism has long been an ideological battlefield, with a seemingly unbridgeable abyss between those who see prostitution as violence against women and those who want it regulated as work, regardless of gender.  What are the costs and trade-offs of transporting this battlefield into humanitarian practice? While I am not aware of any comprehensive effort to track the consequences of criminalisation for sex workers, new research indicates that vulnerable women in prostitution become more vulnerable through criminalisation in the Global North.

Thus, when trying to gauge an appropriate scope for the idea of safeguarding, I think it is necessary to reflect on the usefulness (and normative appropriateness) of maintaining a strong conceptual distinction between procuring sexual services from individuals receiving aid or falling under protection mandates, from sex workers who are not recipients of aid nor in a position of vulnerability in a specific humanitarian field setting.

It is now widely recognised that buying sex in emergencies rests on deep power differences, is fundamentally unacceptable and as such threatens the legitimacy of the sector. While this recognition is long overdue, its emergence should be seen as progress. However, this does not imply that safeguarding practices should be used as a vehicle for criminalising buyers and abolishing prostitution going forward.

This is the sixth and final post in a series on ‘Penal Humanitarianism’, edited by Kjersti Lohne. The posts center around Mary Bosworth’s concept and Kjersti Lohne’s development of penal humanitarianism, and how penal power is justified and extended through the invocation of humanitarian reason. The blog posts were first posted on the “Border Criminologies” blog, and are re-posted here. This post argues that the 2011 Nato intervention in Libya mimics a reaction similar to that of the state, suggesting that the ‘right to punish’ is re-articulated outside the state and within the international.

Jus Puniendi in the International?

Penal humanitarianism – the combination of punitive sentiments and humanitarian ideals – is increasingly moving the ‘power to punish’ beyond the state – not only in relation to migration and international criminal justice; but also in relation to the use of military force to protect vulnerable populations facing systematic violence. Since the 1990s, the use of military interventions has been increasingly launched following humanitarian sentiments towards far away populations subjected to mass violence and in conjunction with human rights imperatives, conveying the idea of ‘doing justice’ through war. This inscription of war among the tools to sanction wrong-doing is linked to the increased status of human rights as global norms for the protection of individuals from violence.

In this post, I argue that the 2011 Nato intervention in Libya shows how human rights are treated with a mix of political condemnation, judicial proceedings, and military might, to indicate wrong-doing within the international- and thus mimic  a criminal justice reaction similar to that of the state. This suggests that the ‘right to punish’ of the state – its ‘jus puniendi’- is now re-articulated outside the state and within the international.  

Under international law, sovereign states are autonomous and in control of their territory and their population. In this line of thought, the international community has no power to interfere with what happens within the borders of a state. However, against the context described above, in the last 30 years the individual, not the state, has moved to the centre of the protection afforded by international law. Therefore, the international society has the duty to protect individuals when states fail; thus, legitimising military operations. These military practices operate outside state power and often feature multiple states and actors, in ways that change our understanding of what counts as punishment, intersecting with humanitarian sentiments, foreign policy, and postcolonial practices.

The 2011 military intervention in Libya was launched with the approval of the UN Security Council under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a rule that sanctions the international community’s ‘collective responsibility to assist populations’ under threat of, or actually experiencing, mass violence in situations where the host state fails to protect them (art 138-139). The UN Resolution authorising military intervention under R2P came as a response to accusations by various power figures, including UK Prime Minister Cameron and French President Sarkozy, of gross human rights violations by the Gaddafi regime against civilians protesting his regime. In this way, powerful actors in the Global North passed a judgment on Libyan elites and their criminality. NATO, swiftly took the lead and intervened militarily, claiming its role as protector of the Libyan people, and framing itself as the authority in charge of enforcing human rights in the region. In other words, it established its jurisdiction over local events. The Libyan leaders – i.e. Gaddafi, his son, acting Prime Minister Salif Al Islam, and former intelligence chief Al Senussi – were indicted by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Moreno Ocampo, evidencing that military operations now function within a criminal justice framework.

Linking military might with legal prosecution (or at least court activation) shapes our understanding of war as an ethical mechanism that censures human rights violations perpetrated by individual criminals. As argued by Lohne, these manifestations of penal humanitarianism require more consideration on the effects that these practices have on our understanding of punishment and sovereignty and on the sort of tension these may engender.  

These punitive military operations launched to sanction and end mass violence are often followed by practices of peacekeeping aimed at getting local populations to accept specific rules of coexistence, establishing the local sovereign state and its criminal justice systems through human rights and international standards. After the NATO victory and the death of Gaddafi in controversial circumstances, the UN sent a small contingent to the country to assist with the establishment of peace. These representatives of international society operated on the ground as experts on democratic institutions, training the locals in human rights norms, encouraging them to adopt specific institutional structures, laws and international standards. The UN Secretary General Reports show how these international experts watched and judged local authorities on their institutional practices. UN officials not only urged new authorities to adopt human rights standards as norms, but also constantly monitored their exercise of power making sure it is informed by international best practices. These international experts effectively attempt to operate some sort of pedagogy of liberal institutions, to shape the local sovereign state, at the same time as they tie its power to the Global North; thus, incorporating the new sovereign and its population in its remit. In doing so, the Global North expands its reach; it shapes governance through sovereign structures at the local level while re-articulating sovereign power at the global level. These two sovereign powers should not be seen as hierarchically constituted but as uncomfortably intersecting. The new norm of responsibility to protect re-articulates the principle of protection within the international society, in turn relocating the state’s power and right to punish, as envisioned within the well-known Hobbesian Leviathan idea. This is symptomatic of an international society increasingly thought of as united through reference to humanity, in which the individual is at the centre of protection. However, this framework problematically renders war and in general military force the best instrument to protect life and create order, at the same time as it legitimates neo-colonial enterprises. While not unprecedented, this way of conceptualising war is odd, given that war used to be thought of as the epitome of disorder (anomie), with military strategists confirming that ‘you know how a war may start but never how it ends’.

This is the fifth post in a six-part series on ‘Penal Humanitarianism’, edited by Kjersti Lohne. The posts center around Mary Bosworth’s concept and Kjersti Lohne’s development of penal humanitarianism, and how penal power is justified and extended through the invocation of humanitarian reason. The blog posts were first posted on the “Border Criminologies” blog, and are re-posted here. The research for this post was conducted while Anette Bringedal Houge was a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, and does not reflect the views of the NRC. The post challenges the recent paradigm in which global grievances are interpreted through a legal lens and criminal justice has become the primary means through which conflict-related sexual violence is to be prevented.

The fight Against Impunity for Sexual Violence in Conflict: Penal Humanitarianism Par Excellence?

Whilst sexual violence has been an offence associated both with war and peacetime throughout history, its rise to the tables where international peace and security are negotiated, represents a significant shift. For this reason, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize was an important, hard-fought recognition of rampant sexual violence on a global scale. Indeed, the apex of the fight against impunity for sexual violence thus far was the media coverage of Nobel laureates Dennis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, and their relentless fight against sexual violence. By showing how imageries of humanitarian suffering have shaped the fight against conflict-related sexual violence as the fight against impunity, this blogpost develops work from Lohne’s 2018 Theoretical Criminology article on penal humanitarianism beyond the state.

Until fairly recently, criminal prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence was practically unheard of. Today, criminal prosecution has become key in dealing with conflict-related sexual violence. As an example of how penal power spreads in the name of ‘doing good’, we nonetheless challenge this rapid and exhaustive naturalization of criminal prosecution not only as a means by which conflict-related sexual violence can be addressed, but as the primary means through which such violence is to be prevented. As Karen Engle observed some time ago, while ‘criminalization of wartime rape marches forward … there has been little reflection … on whether more criminalization is necessarily better than less.’

Mindful of the way the associations between punishment and humanitarianism seem particularly strong when disembedded from the nation state framework, the combination of a victim-oriented justification for international justice and graphic reproductions of the violence victims suffer, are central in the international advocacy and policy field that responds to conflict-related sexual violence. In our analysis of human rights reporting on conflict-related sexual violence, we find reports to follow a script, including an abundance of testimonies that detail the violence and the victims’ suffering during and after the offences. The reports as such draw their titles from victims’ testimonies – as illustrated by ‘My heart is cut’ and ‘I just sit and wait to die.’ Maria E. Baaz and Maria Stern have characterized survivor testimonies for this use as constituting a pornography of violence. In order to produce outrage, a discourse on ‘war/rape/porn’ has emerged, where activists try ‘to outdo each other with the most barbaric gang-rape scenario’. Yet while ‘victims’ justice’ is often evoked as the raison d’être of international criminal justice, the fight against impunity also produces particular imageries of perpetrators and criminality. Perpetrators are re-presented as barbarian, bizarre, and inexplicable. We suggest that this particular combination of victim and perpetrator subjectivities, and the reduction of causalities that it implies, serve to legitimize calls to ‘end impunity!’ through the projected, all-encompassing catharsis brought by the criminal justice system.

The categorical representations of good and evil, civilization and barbarity, humanity and inhumanity disguise the expansion of penal power through the fight against conflict-related sexual violence. Yet punishment should always raise awkward questions about violence, power, and its legitimacy, even though, and perhaps especially so, when calls for punishment have become naturalized in response to humanitarian suffering.  

While human suffering is what drives the moral imperative to intervene in the first place, the fight against impunity movement reflects a strong faith in the ability of law in general – and criminal justice in particular – to transform people and societies. In our study, we show how this faith has materialized in a prognostic social movement to end impunity, exemplified by UN Security Council resolutions and reports from Human Rights Watch. However, in spite of the emergence of what Kathryn Sikkink has called the ‘justice cascade’, that is, an increase of criminal prosecutions of human rights violations, there has been far less attention to whether this has led to a corresponding increase in justice. Thus, instead of addressing root causes of war/violence/rape, criminal justice is offered as a solution that will ensure that victims’ ‘plight will be heard and their attackers punished [and that] future rapes can be heeded’. The strong footing of deterrence as justification and rationale for criminal prosecutions of conflict-related sexual violence can partly be explained by the more general embrace of liberal legalism as ideology and practice in international policy. It is a world view that substantially privileges individual autonomy – and responsibility. This means that the individual has increasingly become a subject of international law, with corresponding individual rights and responsibilities. Moreover, it has also substantially juridified our understanding of social phenomena: law (particularly rights-claiming) has become the preferred interpretative tool through which to frame global grievances. It is in this paradigm, the fight against conflict-related sexual violence has become the fight against impunity, to the extent that it is only through ending impunity we can address sexual violence. Prevention has become prosecution as humanitarian calls to end suffering has turned to criminal justice.

However, the construction of criminal justice as a panacea for conflict-related sexual violence zealously overestimates its ability to civilize and transform, and distracts attention away from broader social and structural conditions that foster and allow for sexual violence to take place. Paralleling criticism of domestic carceral feminism, we see a need for greater attention to the political, economic and gendered inequalities and structures within which sexual violence take place. Conflict-related sexual violence is indeed part of a repertoire of illegitimate warfare, and a reaction to the chaotic, desperate and demoralizing experiences that war brings with it, but it is also the result of gendered hierarchies, subordination, and poverty, and a continuum of violence that transgresses war and peace. While our article unpacks how conflict-related sexual violence is reduced to a problem of criminal justice, we also recognize its instrumental capacities as a tool for criminal justice. Epitomizing how humanitarianism can facilitate the expansion of penal power, the fight against impunity for conflict-related sexual violence has produced particularly apt imageries of victims and perpetrators that serve the international criminal justice project, contributing to legitimate its current institutions and practices. If ending impunity prevails and perseveres as the ultimately meaningful response to conflict-related sexual violence despite criminal justice’s limited merits as a preventive tool, it is pertinent to ask if the primary aim of this fight is to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, or rather, to strengthen the penal power of international criminal justice as such.

This is the fourth post in a six-part series on ‘Penal Humanitarianism’, edited by Kjersti Lohne. The posts center around Mary Bosworth’s concept and Kjersti Lohne’s development of penal humanitarianism, and how penal power is justified and extended through the invocation of humanitarian reason. The blog posts were first posted on the “Border Criminologies” blog, and are re-posted here. Drawing on the case of Niger, this post explores some of the processes through which the EU projects penal power beyond Europe and its allegedly humanitarian rationale.

Projecting European Penal Power Beyond Europe: Humanitarian War on Migrant Smuggling in West Africa

The European Union (EU) and its member states are increasingly pushing countries in the southern (extended) neighbourhood to criminalise unwanted mobility, and bolstering their internal security apparatuses and borders. The objective of this ‘internal security assistance’ is to combat transnational security threats and illicit flows of goods and people allegedly en route to Europe. Based on my doctoral research, which has included fieldwork in Niger, Mali, Senegal and Brussels, this post reflects on the EU’s increasing tendency of crime control ‘at a distance’ in West Africa.

Penal power is the power to render an activity criminal and to enforce criminal law, which is neatly entwined with a state’s sovereignty. For instance, Vanessa Barker writes how the reinforcement of national borders within Europe can be seen as a recent expression of state-craft where penal power is particularly salient. Yet Mary Bosworth argues that humanitarianism allows penal power to travel beyond the nation state, as can be observed in cases such as England’s aid to the building of prisons in its former colonies to which it can transfer and expel prisoners from these countries. Developing Bosworth’s concept of ‘penal humanitarianism’ further, Kjersti Lohne shows, through the supranational case of the International Criminal Court (ICC), how the power to punish is particularly driven by humanitarian reason when punishment is disembedded from the nation state altogether.

This blogpost examines some of the processes through which the EU projects penal power beyond Europe and its allegedly humanitarian rationale. I draw on the country case of Niger, which is also an example often used by the EU to showcase a well-functioning partnership in stopping migration to Europe through criminalisation and ‘breaking the business model of human smugglers.’ In this case, penal power is not actually detached from the state. While the EU is both a supranational and inter-governmental entity, I argue it could also be seen as something like ‘pooled European penal power’. This European penal power works through a third state by bolstering this state’s own penal power, without being entirely able to control how this power is in turn utilised in practice. So what is the relation between sovereignty and penal power when the EU border is externalised to West Africa?

European penal power in West Africa

West Africa, and the Sahel region that cuts across the Sahara Desert, have become a priority to the EU and its member states in terms of controlling unwanted mobility. Conceptualising security threats as flows of illicit or dangerous commodities and people crossing borders and spilling into Europe, the EU is now seeking ‘partnerships’ with African regimes to build barriers further south. Substantial efforts are being put into shaping West African penal codes and reinforcing criminal justice and security apparatuses to deal with illicit flows. In order to incentivise an actual change, EU aid and budget support, on which many West African countries depend, is increasingly made conditional upon the adoption of security strategies, the reform of internal security forces and the securing of borders.

One such example is the EU’s much celebrated ‘partnership’ with President Issoufou of Niger. In 2015, conspicuously coinciding with the European ‘migration crisis’, Niger adopted a law criminalising ‘migrant smuggling’. The EU assisted Niger in drafting the law and provided advice, training and capacity-building for its enforcement. This was done, among other, through the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) mission EUCAP Sahel Niger, and through projects financed by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. EU aid to Niger continued to grow, and in December 2017 the European Commission announced 1 billion euro in support by 2020, as Niger had demonstrated ‘strong political willingness and leadership’ to confront challenges. Indeed, in 2016 Nigerien authorities started rigorously enforcing the law, selectively in the northern town of Agadez which had figured in the international press as the hub for migrants travelling to Libya and Algeria. Since then more than 130 ‘migrant smugglers’ have been arrested and their vehicles seized, and the number of migrants crossing into Libya registered by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is reported to have dropped. The Niger migrant smuggling law and its enforcement is seen as so successful that the EU wants to replicate it in other Sahel countries as well.

Penal humanitarianism at Europe’s extraterritorial border

The rationale behind the EU’s fight against ‘migrant smugglers’ in Niger is framed as a humanitarian obligation: stopping migrants from travelling through Niger equals saving them from dying in the hands of evil people smugglers or in Libyan detention camps. This is not very different from Libya further north, where the EU’s training of the ‘coast guard’ is justified by saving people from drowning in the Mediterranean. Nor is it very different from the EU’s external borders where, according to Katja Franko and Helene Gundhus, the discourse of protecting the human rights of migrants permeate the borderwork of Frontex officers.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) in Niger and the local population in Agadez are strongly opposed to the criminal category of ‘migrant smuggling’ as it relates to Nigerien reality. Guiding people through the desert has been a noble, traditional role for centuries, and now-called migrant smugglers are not ‘organised crime syndicates’ as the European Commission assumes (also see Sanchez, 2015). Moreover, CSOs claim the new law is de facto suspending the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol on free movement for ECOWAS citizens, which most of the migrants are. Intra-African migration is a crucial livelihood strategy in a region fraught with periodical extreme drought and climate change. Research also documented severe de-stabilising effects of the law enforcement as the economy of the region of Agadez collapsed, leading the local population to lose their livelihoods, fuelling economic frustrations and anger, and increasing armed banditry and general insecurity.

Conclusions

The case of EU policies in Niger corroborates the argument that penal power can take on a humanitarian rationale when it travels. This seems to be particularly the case when criminal justice, migration control, international development and foreign policy intersect. Complicating the relationship between sovereignty and penal power, Niger’s sovereignty is both hollowed out by mediating European ‘pooled’ penal power and at the same time boosted by the co-option of aid into President Issoufou’s personal goals. What is certain is that the security of Europe does not equal the human security of migrants or local Nigerien communities, nor does the latter equal the security of the Nigerien regime.

This is the third post in a six-part series on ‘Penal Humanitarianism’, edited by Kjersti Lohne. The posts center around Mary Bosworth’s concept and Kjersti Lohne’s development of penal humanitarianism, and how penal power is justified and extended through the invocation of humanitarian reason. The blog posts were first posted on the “Border Criminologies” blog, and are re-posted here. This post delves into how individuals tasked with carrying out state policies on border control react to direct encounters with human suffering, and the implications such interpersonal encounters may have on border studies as a whole.

Moral Discomfort at the Border: Understanding Penal Humanitarianism in Practice

A growing body of recent scholarship has pointed out the intricate connections between the exercise of penal power and humanitarianism in general, as well humanitarianism at the border (see e.g. Fassin; Bosworth; Lohne). This research has shown the centrality of humanitarian ideals and language within different penal sites and programs such as prison building programs abroad, the International Criminal Court and various border control practices. Humanitarian ideals are exposed as central to governmental discourses, disembedding penal power from the nation state, and often used to legitimize highly controversial border practices as matters of saving and protecting lives or promoting human rights.

Mary Bosworth, for example, observes that ‘human rights rhetoric and practices can justify the exercise of coercive state powers, even if their supporters wish it were otherwise’. In these contexts, humanitarianism is understood to function as a smokescreen and a technique for glossing over the ethically problematic and messy realities of border control. As Didier Fassin suggests: ‘Humanitarianism has this remarkable capacity: it fugaciously and illusorily bridges the contradictions of our world, and makes the intolerableness of its injustices somewhat bearable. Hence, its consensual force.’ In this post, we wish to contribute to the debate by drawing attention to the somewhat neglected aspects of humanitarianism in practice.

In our own work, we have analysed the deployment of humanitarian language and the discourse of human rights in Frontex operations. The precarious situation at Europe’s external borders is creating an irresolvable tension between the interests of European states to seal off their borders and the respect for fundamental human rights. The paradox of the centrality of ‘saving lives at sea’ in EU policy documents illuminates the disconnection between the performative aspects of humanitarianism and its operational use. The study revealed obvious contradictions and disjunctions between the objectives of state security and a lack of concern for migrants’ vulnerability, transferred into member states’ national risk assessments indicators.

However, we also uncovered the centrality of humanitarian sentiments in the narratives of police officers tasked with performing everyday border control. Indeed, the interviews with Frontex officers revealed a rather complex picture. While the humanitarian discourse clearly does a certain kind of performative ‘work’, it also seems to be to some extent internalized and appropriated by actors on the ground. Many officers talked with deeply felt seriousness and compassion about providing clothing and medicine for cold, wet and sick migrants. Some experienced the situation to be so serious that they drew analogies to the WW2. As one experienced officer described the situation in Greek detention centres: ‘It was like watching, it is terrible to say that, but it was like watching a war movie from 1943. Simply like that. Coming close to concentration camps.’ The controversial concentration camp analogy is, therefore, not only used by impassioned outside critics, but also by people within the system.

Although these stories of compassion and concern can be understood as a form of narrative self-legitimation work in a system which suffers from acute deficits in legitimacy (Bosworth; Ugelvik ), we would like to suggest that they also do a more complex work which may merit further analytical attention. In our study, compassion was often expressed as a result of having a more direct and closer contact with human suffering, which led the officers not only to sympathize with migrants, but also to see them in a more positive way and as more trustworthy. One officer described:

You get a slightly different understanding, because you get so much closer to the person, the credibility of the person standing before you is much stronger. I have registered asylum seekers [in Norway] until I’m exhausted (…) All of them are saying the same. (…) While here, you do have real people standing in front of you, telling a trustworthy story (Police Officer, de-briefer, PU6).

Here, compassion may still have performative and self-legitimating aspects (not least in relation to the interviewers), yet it is also an emotion which arises due to the physical closeness to suffering, resembling ‘the living presence’ of the Other described by Emmanuel Levinas. This presence is experienced and is different from, and not reducible to, words and ideas. As one officer said: ‘you see the hopelessness in it. I have in a sense understood it for several years, but now I can see the reality of what they are talking about’ (PU4).

We would like to suggest that such sentiments of understanding, compassion and a wish to help, which arise from direct, on the ground human encounters (although related) should be distinguished from the performative aspects of humanitarianism visible particularly in political discourse and policy documents. They demand a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of humanitarianism within border studies and an acknowledgement of the ambivalent feelings and moral discomfort inherent in  doing border work. This discomfort is dealt quite differently by individuals performing border control and is felt more acutely by some than others. Nevertheless, amplified by intense public critique, moral discomfort seems to be an inherent part of doing border control and can in some cases lead to outright resistance.

For example, our interviews with police officers performing border control in Norway demonstrated clear disagreement in how the police should use their newly acquired right to conduct border checks. Random territorial control of foreign citizens in the city center and targeted controls of families in detention centers were criticised for being immoral and inhumane. There was also a resentment of using deportation numbers as official performance targets for police work. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ divisions, which are frequently talked about in relation to migrants, were thus also created within the police force. As one officer from Oslo Police District described:

Well, it can be said that internally, within the police, there are different understandings of how to apply immigration law. It is just as well if this came out. Some look at this from an ethical perspective – that is us – while others are more concerned with performance targets and such. And the ethical side thinks that performance targets are a wrong way of doing the work, and admits that this is a sensitive field to work in, while it seems to me that the others, the other side, have not reflected on this well enough. I know that within the Police Immigration Unit there are disagreements as well.

Border studies have, so far, paid relatively scarce attention to such internal resistance and the moral and ethical discomfort of performing border control (see Bosworth for valuable exception). By seeing humanitarian rationalities primarily as a way of cementing and legitimizing the status quo, we may be operating with a rather one-dimensional understanding of humanitarianism and failing to differentiate between different aspects and actors. While one of the main strengths of studies of humanitarianism has been to connect broad policy issues to questions of morality and emotion, this slippage may be also one of its main drawbacks due to the obscuring of on the ground inter-personal dynamics. Moreover, the field may be slow in recognizing resistance, and potential for it, coming from within the system. Consequently, a question can be asked whether border studies may be poorly equipped to fully understand the dialectics of change arising from the moral discomfort of doing border work, as well as liable to reproduce its own ‘us’ and ‘them’ divisions.