Refugees and Migrants on the Sea Under African Continental Maritime Regime

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210506.006How to use a DOI?

Keywords

maritime refugee/migrants, African continental law, international law, maritime regime

Abstract

The movement of refugees and migrants across the sea has been on the increase in recent times. The United Nations Refugee Agency has often raised alarm on the increasing level of fatalities occurring as people move for safety or to greener pastures across the sea. In the case of Africa, the situation is dire as, according to the Agency, 6 persons die every day on the Mediterranean Sea, for example. In 2018, en-route to Europe from Libya, 1 out of every 14 persons perished compared to 1 out of 38 in the previous year. No less than a total of 2628 persons-including children- lost their lives. There have been calls for regional action to tackle this problem. The issue is whether African Union has got specific instruments to deal with this problem in specific terms in addition to general obligations of member States in International Law. While the African Union’s Refugee Convention has provisions governing the precarious problem faced by refugees, it doesn’t envisage the kind of problems arising from the movement of refugees and asylum seekers on the sea. Over the past decade, the continental organization has developed a robust set of instruments to govern the sea including treaties such as the African Maritime Transport Charter (AMTC) and the African Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development (ACMSSD), the latter instrument yet to come into effect. The African Union has also got a continental strategy on the sea, the African Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS) whose dedication page reads in part: “To those who died while at sea trying to earn a better quality of lives.” There are general provisions in these instruments that are relevant for the protection of refugees on the sea such as those relating to the safety of vessels(AMTC) and those dealing with human trafficking and smuggling on the sea(ACMSSD, AIMS). However, there are questions as to the extent to which these instruments offer specific and comprehensive regimes such as to proscribe the behavior of states preventing search and rescue of refugees in danger in the name of serving as a deterrent to would-be immigrants. The purpose of this paper is to examine the existing continental instruments for provisions relevant to refugee governance and protection. The paper, based on the examination, makes relevant recommendations.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tajudeen Sanni
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/05/08
TI  - Refugees and Migrants on the Sea Under African Continental Maritime Regime
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Law and Human Rights 2020 (ICLHR 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 32
EP  - 39
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210506.006
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210506.006
ID  - Sanni2021
ER  -