Work: Europe’s Promise
Author: Olivier Schwalm
Nowhere else are there so many laws protecting the dignity and freedom of citizens as in Europe: the European Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. These promises are one of the cornerstones on which West prosperity and hegemony has rested since the post-war period, says historian and refugee researcher Philipp Ther. Without this promise, “the West would lose a lot and would have to retreat into the field of pure power politics.”
In 2016, the United Nations adopted the New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants. The document “expresses the political will of world leaders to save lives, protect rights and share responsibility on a global scale.” When several hundred thousand refugees headed for Europe in 2015, they relied on these promises. Since then, the public discourse has changed completely. Now there are no more refugees, there are wealth-threatening economic migrants. There are no volunteer rescuers, but traffickers.
Nobody puts their own children in a boat, except when the water is safer than the land.