Abusing the international solidarity principle: Human rights, international solidarity, and the EU’s bilateral migration deals

Jamal Barnes and Samuel M. Makinda discuss the key points from their new Review of International Studies (RIS) article. If you'd like to know more you can read the full article here - Abusing the international solidarity principle: Human rights, international solidarity, and the EU’s bilateral migration deals

The international solidarity principle is an integral part of international society. It is considered a general principle of international law and is embedded in various treaties and declarations. This principle aims to facilitate cooperation, guide state conduct, and uphold international human rights in a variety of international policy areas, including refugee policy. As a key norm within the 1951 Refugee Convention, the international solidarity principle encourages states to work together to develop equitable and fair responsibility sharing frameworks to create effective responses to global displacement. 

But, how do states interpret the international solidarity principle? And, what impact have their interpretations had on asylum seekers and refugees? This article examines these questions through an analysis of the European Union’s (EU) and Member States’ cooperative partnerships with neighbouring states. Over several decades, the EU and Member States have implemented migration externalisation policies that have aimed to deter people from arriving at European borders. This policy suite is now extensive, and comprises visas, airline sanctions, walls and barriers, pushbacks and pullbacks, detention, and cooperation with partner countries. This framework has effectively extended Europe’s borders outwards, and enabled the EU to deter asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants remotely, preventing them from arriving at its shores. The EU policy framework has also made it easier for asylum seekers and refugees to be returned to their countries of origin or third countries.  

Over the last decade or so, the EU and several Member States have developed external partnerships to achieve these migration deterrence goals. Since 2015, agreements have been established with Türkiye, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Lebanon, among others. These arrangements have involved providing these partner countries with financial, material, and economic support. The EU has also helped partner states with border management issues, facilitated returns, initiated security cooperation, and assisted with fighting people smuggling and trafficking. In return, partner countries have pledged to prevent would-be irregular migrants from arriving at Europe’s borders. A key justification for these external partnerships is not just to stop irregular migration, save lives at sea, and tackle people smuggling and trafficking networks, but something that the EU and Member States use as evidence of international solidarity. 

We argue that deploying migration deterrence policies and claiming that they represent acts of international solidarity amounts to an abuse of the international solidarity principle. We show that such acts have profound consequences for both the principle itself and the rights of asylum seekers and refugees. We argue that the EU and Member States have re-interpreted the norm to suit their migration deterrence goals while evading important elements and obligations under the international solidarity principle. The EU re-interpretation of the international solidarity principle was shaped by, and shaped to fit, the EU’s broader externalisation framework. Therefore, we argue that the EU and Member States have decoupled human rights from the international solidarity principle and undermined its constitutive elements. 

The Draft Declaration on the Right to International Solidarity, which we draw upon to understand the international solidarity principle, identifies three components to the solidarity principle. The first is preventive solidarity, which is considered to be part of a state’s obligation to uphold its human rights obligations. The second is reactive solidarity, which requires states to cooperate with other international actors to respond to crises, such as natural disasters or mass displacement of people. And, the third is international cooperation, which is a necessary condition for the instantiation of the first two components of international solidarity. Therefore, the international solidarity principle is bound up with the protection and achievement of human rights. Human rights must be protected while states are implementing international solidarity, and rights must be part of the outcome when states and other actors are cooperating to respond to global crises. 

However, as the EU and Member States have interpreted the principle to justify cooperation on migration deterrence as an act of solidarity, it constitutes an abuse of the principle as it is shaped to reflect strategic interests and undermines key principles of the norm. By making it consistent with its migration deterrence framework, the EU and Member States have been able to evade both human rights obligations to asylum seekers and refugees and equitable responsibility sharing obligations. They have undermined preventive solidarity by undermining human rights principles, such as the right to asylum, non-refoulement, and economic and social rights under the convention. Moreover, reactive solidarity has been undermined as the EU has privileged sovereignty while paying little attention to humanitarian norms. Therefore, the EU’s interpretation of the international solidarity norm has undermined both the letter and spirit of the principle.  

The consequences of these policies have been dire for the rights of asylum seekers and refugees. People returned to countries such as Libya and Tunisia have been exposed to brutal human rights violations, including rape, torture, slavery, expulsions, inhuman treatment, discrimination, and racism. Moreover, these partnerships have contributed to unjust hierarchies in international society by perpetuating inequitable responsibility sharing arrangements between countries. In addition, we argue that such arrangements are having adverse consequences for the reputation of the EU and Member States as they have been criticised for human rights abuses and for being complicit in the violations of rights by partner countries.  

Our article makes three important contributions to understanding the international solidarity principle in international society. First, much of the scholarship on how the EU and Member States have implemented the solidarity principle regarding asylum seekers and refugees has been about how it has been implemented within the EU. However, how the EU has interpreted it in its external partnerships remains underexplored. Thus, previous research had neglected how the EU has exercised solidarity with external partners and the impact such relationships have had on the international solidarity principle. 

Second, the article moves beyond a legal or normative analysis of solidarity to show the way international law and politics intertwine in how states interpret the solidarity principle and implement it in practice. Norm contestation is a normal part of international life. However, this does not mean that states can define norms however they like. States strategically interpret norms and laws to evade obligations. Nonetheless, what the norm evasion literature has not adequately examined is how norm interpretations are shaped by institutional dynamics, pressures, policy settings, and objectives. The EU and Member States’ norm evasion strategies were shaped by, and shaped to fit, their broader set of migration externalisation policies. 

And third, our article sheds light on the relationship between human rights and international solidarity. The international solidarity principle is most often discussed in the context of responsibility sharing obligations regarding refugees and how those obligations should be distributed. However, the international solidarity principle is also concerned with upholding human rights principles. Migration deterrence policies undermine these principles, and we argue that the international solidarity principle should not be interpreted to fit within the EU and Member States’ migration deterrence goals. Instead, the global mass displacement of people requires a response that interprets international solidarity in line with human rights principles and practices, that challenges unjust hierarchies and partnerships and creates equitable and fair responsibility sharing arrangements. Not only will this uphold the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, but it will protect the international solidarity principle from abuse and help create a more effective and humane response to people on the move.

Want to know more? You can read the full article at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525101125

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