Image of Aylan Kurdi drowned on a Turkish beach in 2015 marked the beginning of the debate on the moral obligation of Europe to welcome refugees
The photograph of a two -year -old boy drowned on a Turkish beach when his family was trying to arrive in Europe in 2015 the start of the moral obligation of Europe to host refugees.
Ten years later, the number of dead and missing in the Mediterranean reaches 30,000, several countries have decided to pass the legal processes of refugee assessment and asylum applicants to third countries, in order to prevent they from reaching Europe, and the rejection of migrants has become a flag of several governments.
The deaths have been running for months when Alan (or Aylan) Kurdi’s photograph, taken by Turkish photographer Nilufer Demir, reporter for Turkish news agency DHA, shocked European public opinion.
It was published on September 2, made 10 years this week, and became viral in the world: a two-year-old boy prostrate upside down on a Turkish coast beach.
He had drowned during an attempt to cross, in a fragile and overcrowded boat from Türkiye to Greece.
The same happened to hundreds of other refugees and migrants on the same route that year. The year 2015 marked the peak of an unprecedented migratory flow, which exposed the deficiencies of the EU asylum system and the lack of coordination between the Member States.
This year, with a growing escape of Syrians of the crisis in the country, Europe received more than one million refugees and migrants and more than 2.3 million irregular crossings were detected this year and the following.
The publication of this photograph also generated a debate on the ethical issue, because the image showed a dead child, but this controversy was quickly alleviated when Alan’s father, Abdullah Kurdi, supported the publication in subsequent interviews.
“I want the whole world to see us. I want the whole world to see us. We are going through a tragedy and I don’t want those who come after us go through it,” Kurdi said at the time, the Turkish official news agency Anadolu said.
Abdullah Kurdi was one of the few survivors of the insufflatable boat, who also caused the death of his wife and another son of the couple.
The political debate led, six months later, to an agreement between the EU and Turkey, through which Brussels would transfer six billion euros to Ankara in the following years to improve care for Syrian refugees in the country.
In addition, the agreement provided the deportation for the Türkiye of refugees who had arrived at the Greek islands.
European financing helped improve the living conditions of the three million Syrians registered in Turkey, which since 2013 had free access to public health and primary education and could work semi -legally – much better conditions than those waiting for them in the Greek fields and along the Balkan Route.
This was the first externalization of the process throughout Europe, but several followedly followed the most recent, which foresees the transfer of migrants arrived to Italy through the Mediterranean to repatriation centers built in Albania.
The realization of this agreement has been prevented by the Italian courts, but the project “won” the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von de Leyen, who argued that the EU should consider legislating on “return centers” in third countries to accelerate the expulsions of illegal immigrants.
The position of the European states on migration, which in the last decade have gone from considering the reception of refugees as a moral duty for the hardening of the policy of migration that aims to chase and expel the illegal, was strongly criticized this week by the Non-Governmental Organization for the Defense of Human Rights International Human Rights (AI).
“Europe continues to fail with those seeking protection,” he accused the AI, underlining, in a statement, that states “are increasingly renouncing fundamental values: human dignity, freedom, equality and human rights.”
In the last decade, the EU and Member States “persisted in the plans to externalize asylum responsibilities, despite the convictions and human rights violations that it entails,” he criticized.
“Giving priority to border externalization and control policies only causes more suffering and death. The solution is to put people at the center of worries and ensure that states assume the responsibility to deal with the causes of forced travel, such as climate change,” said AI.
