On this International Migrants Day, EuroMed Rights and the signatory organisations reaffirm the urgent need to place human rights at the heart of migration policies. In a context where the European Union is increasingly outsourcing migration management to countries in the southern neighborhood, we are witnessing a worsening of fundamental rights violations, an increase in disappearances and deaths of people on the move, and a worrying decline in transparency and institutional accountability.

The submission of EuroMed Rights and its members to the OHCHR report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants covering externalisation of migration governance demonstrate that new European policy frameworks, including the Pact on Migration and Asylum, revisions to the return regime, the increased use of the concepts of "safe countries of origin" and "safe third countries," and the expansion of opaque bilateral agreements, are increasingly exposing people on the move to violence, pushbacks, arbitrary detention, and discrimination. Surveillance mechanisms, the growing use of surveillance technologies, and the lack of procedural safeguards fuel a system that, instead of protecting, contributes to endangering lives.

EuroMed Rights points out that externalisation does not reduce migration, it makes it more dangerous and crueler.

This strategy creates increasingly deadly routes, undermines access to justice for people on the move and their families, strengthens authoritarian regimes, and exacerbates racism in several countries in the region. The number of disappearances continues to rise due to the persistent and often deliberate non-involvement of states in the search for missing people in the Mediterranean basin. Their families relentlessly search for their loved ones, sometimes for decades, making mourning impossible and reunions increasingly unlikely.

The disproportionate impacts of externalisation on women and girls, exposed to particular forms of sexual and gender-based violence, are especially alarming.

On this 18th December, we call on the European Union, its Member States and the countries in the region to fully respect international human rights obligations, including the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees; guarantee and expand safe and legal pathways for people on the move; end opaque agreements that circumvent democratic scrutiny; ensure genuine transparency in the financing of migration policies; refuse the use or outsourcing of invasive technologies that jeopardize fundamental freedoms; recognize and document human rights violations and the disappearances of people on the move; and support families in their pursuit of truth and justice.

The protection of people on the move is non-negotiable. It must be at the heart of all public policy, both in Europe and in its neighbouring countries.

Signatories:

• CS-LADDH (Collective for the Safeguarding of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights)

• Foundation for the Promotion of Rights in Algeria
• Greek Committee for an International Democratic Society (EEDDA)

• Mizan, Law Group for Human Rights (Jordan)

• Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH)

• NOVACT

• World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)