MSF statement on UK-France migration deal
11th July, London - Following the deal announced on the final day of the Anglo-French summit in the UK, MSF has responded:
"This new agreement is not only reckless and ill-fated – it's dangerous. The notion that men, women and children can be reduced to mere numbers and exchangeable tokens is shameful. We’ve seen before that this type of ‘exchange deal’ does not deter people from making journeys, it makes the journeys risker and meters out huge human cost on those seeking refuge. For almost a decade, our medical teams on the Greek islands have witnessed the consequences of the 2016 EU-Türkiye deal, which has inflicted extreme physical and mental suffering on men, women and children trying to reach mainland Europe.
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron claim their objective is to ‘smash the smuggling gangs’, yet it is precisely their own policies of border externalisation and securitsation, and the refusal to create safe, accessible pathways to the UK, that creates the conditions for smuggling, human trafficking and more dangerous journeys. Since the 2003 Le Touquet Accords, the intensification of militarising the border has increased the precariousness of people seeking safety and the increase of extreme levels of violence, harassment and abuse against them. Our teams in France see it daily: UK-funded French crackdowns pushing people into riskier routes, violence, and exploitation.
This deal further erodes the right to asylum, enshrined in the Refugee Convention, part of a broader erosion of the very international laws the UK and France claim to respect and uphold.
Finally, with French authorities starting to intercept boats further out to sea makes it’s clearer than ever, for all their declarations, the UK and France are not interested in ‘saving lives’, it is about deterrence at any cost. And that cost will be counted in human misery and lives lost."