Oxfam

This author's articles

• Foreign territory : the internationalisation of EU asylum policy

  27 July 2007
  The countries of the European Union (EU) host only a small and declining fraction of the world’s 13 million refugees, but there are few more politicised issues than asylum in Europe. European policy makers have already introduced measures to limit and deter asylum seekers, but now asylum policy is being moved overseas. In the past two years alone, EU member states and institutions have presented an array of initiatives with one common theme: instead of receiving asylum seekers on EU territory, they propose to deal with them abroad. All these proposals have real implications for the people who are fleeing for their own safety and often for their lives – implications which European governments have largely failed to consider.