29.01.2004 - 15:09 CET
UN boss blasts Europe's migration policy
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has used his acceptance of an EU human rights prize to launch a scathing attack on Europe's attitudes toward migration and asylum.
Addressing the European Parliament today (29 January) on receiving the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Mr Annan said that asylum seekers and migrants "should not be made the scapegoats for a vast array of social ills".
"The public has been fed images of a flood of unwelcome entrants, and of threats to their societies and identities", he said.
"In the process, immigrants have sometimes been stigmatised, vilified, even dehumanised".
Mr Annan urged the EU to open up its borders: "Your asylum systems are overburdened precisely because many people who feel they must leave see no other channel through which to migrate".
"Many others try more desperate and clandestine measures, and are sometimes injured or even killed – suffocating in trucks, drowning at sea, or perishing in the undercarriage of aircraft."
"We cannot simply close our doors, or shut our eyes to this human tragedy," Annan said.
The former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, also warned against the consequences of such public perception.
"A closed Europe would be a meaner, poorer, weaker, older Europe. Migrants are part of the solution, not part of the problem".
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