An Unjust "Vision" for Europe's RefugeesHuman Rights Watch Commentary on the U.K.'s "New Vision" Proposal for the Establishment of Refugee Processing Centers AbroadHuman Rights Watch Backgrounder, June 17, 2003 ConclusionThe U.K. has justified its "new vision" policy by claiming that financial support for refugees is badly distributed throughout the world and because asylum seekers reaching the E.U. are not the most vulnerable ones. The European Commission's communication accepts that these are some of the main "deficiencies of the current asylum systems."158 However, Human Rights Watch takes issue with even these basic premises upon which the entire "new vision" proposal is based. First, while it is certainly the case that refugees in developing countries could benefit greatly from increased protection and financial assistance, improving those standards does not justify decreasing the protection offered to refugees in Europe. Second, Human Rights Watch has found that in many cases those refugees who move on from their regions of origin do so because they are in fact exceedingly vulnerable: they have been denied protection or a secure legal status in the first countries they reach.159 The U.K. proposal should not be implemented as it stands because of the serious practical and legal problems outlined in this commentary. Instead of providing a basic level of protection to refugees and asylum seekers, as required by the Refugee Convention, the U.K. proposal threatens to subject such persons to persecution and tenuous living conditions, in some cases even beyond those experienced in the country they originally fled. The establishment of processing centers finds no support in international law and may directly implicate the U.K. or another transferring government in the human rights violations of a third country. Human Rights Watch urges European governments to reject the U.K.'s "new vision" proposal because it exacerbates an unjust system for the world's refugees. Human Rights Watch urges all states to adopt an approach that complies with the standard of effective protection, which can best be provided to the world's refugees in a state's own territory. 158 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, June 3, 2003 (COM(2003) 315 final), p. 6. 159 Human Rights Watch, By Invitation Only: Australia Refugee Policy, Vol. 14, No. 10, December 2002; Human Rights Watch, Hidden in Plain View: Refugees Living Without Protection in Nairobi and Kampala, November 2002, p. 170-175.
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