World Refugees Day 2019 – SOLIDAR statement and recommendations

The World Refugees Day should remind the importance of a fair and concrete migration policy for the management of the arrivals of refugees in Europe and worldwide. Six months ago the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the Global Compact on Refugees as common framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing, recognizing that a sustainable solution to refugee situations cannot be achieved without international cooperation.

SOLIDAR members are on the forefront to help concretely vulnerable groups of refugees and asylum seekers. Interventions include social assistance, awareness raising about their rights, legal advice, as well as support to women, inclusion through education and training. Based on these practices SOLIDAR network presents a set of recommendations for an improved and more humanitarian driven welcome, integration and inclusion of refugees in our societies. (cf also SOLIDAR position paper on migration attached).  

SOLIDAR calls for:

  • Open safe and legal migration channels, implement an EU humanitarian visa scheme, better regulate complementary pathways, as family reunifications, and reform of the EU blue card, focusing not only on upskilled refugees but recognizing all the different levels of qualification and validation of formal and non-formal skills.
  • Promote the international resettlement of refugees, mostly for those hosted in countries where their rights and safety are not guaranteed. Also promote a fair relocation policy in the EU for starting solve the systemic impasse in the migration management and better regulate at the European level the arrivals of asylum seekers and people in need of international protection.
  • Foster a concrete and fair integration of refugees, based on humanitarian needs and respecting the background of people in need of international protection.
  • Focus development cooperation on tackling forced displacement and its root causes
  • Stop every kind of forced return which is often in violation of international law.
  • Acknowledge and promote the efforts made by NGOs to save lives at sea in the absence of a coordinated institutional response
  • Stop outrageous criminalization of humanitarian action and rescue activities in the Mediterranean Sea.
  • Foster the respect from all of the rule of law, international law, international conventions and European treaties, and last but not least of fundamental rights.