Protection in the Borderlands of Europe

Our research in Greece, Turkey and Lebanon, having the GCR and the GCM as its starting point, documented huge discrepancies between protection in theory and in actual practice, failures to adequately monitor the provision of protection in accordance with the EU legal framework, failures in accountability and poor administration of data. It also showed that severe protection gaps emerge because access to basic needs is dependent on legal status, that restrictions on displaced people’s freedom of movement produced by state policies in the name of security generate precarity in urban and camp settings and that in exceptional circumstances civil society actors are treated as substitutes to the state’s obligation to offer protection.

On this basis we make a number of recommendations. At the level of the state we recommend, (a) the standardization and systematic publication of data relating to displaced peoples’ access to services including legal protection, healthcare and accommodation, (b) the disaggregation of data facilitating accurate reporting and responses to protection needs in particular localities, and (c) the establishment of a robust monitoring system with the will and power to act on failures and effectively prevent the reproduction of state practices that put displaced people at risk. More generally we recommend, (a) access to protection and the provision of basic needs must be decoupled from legal status, (b) the legal mechanisms must not put displaced people at risk or generate additional precarity, (c) governments must secure a safe environment for the free operation of humanitarian actors offering protection, yet should not solely rely on them to fill protection gaps and, (d) freedom of movement as a fundamental right must always apply to displaced people regardless of location or legal status.