The first SIRIUS policy dialogue workshop Integration of Migrants and Refugees: a contested issue in domestic and EU politics and how to address it was held in Athens on Friday 9 November. The SIRIUS consortium, in collaboration with its partners SolidarityNow and DIKTIO, convened different stakeholders to explore how Europe can approach migration and asylum through integration and not externalization.

Antigone Lyberaki of SolidarityNow and Simone Baglioni of SIRIUS made welcoming speeches, which were followed by a keynote remark from Deborah Carlos-Valencia of Melissa Network. After presenting how Melissa’s programs promote the specific needs of women refugees, she highlighted why migration and integration policies must adopt a gendered approach and address the specific challenges and vulnerabilities women and girls face to ultimately support their empowerment and agency.

The first session featured principal investigators of the SIRIUS Project who provided an overview of the results of the two Work Packages completed thus far (available here and here), which compare various barriers and enablers of labour integration across the SIRIUS Countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). Dr. Konstantinos Konstantakis of NTUA presented macro-economic findings on the relationship between migrants’ skills and the needs of the national labour market and showed that given the uneven economic landscapes, opportunities for labour market integration vary substantially by country.  Dr. Veronica Federico of UNIFI provided a comparative overview of migration and labour integration law in the seven cases, and emphasized that the complexity of legal frameworks, combined with hierarchical classification of migrants contributes to the narrowing access to rights and protection.

The second panel focused specifically on Greece. In her introduction, Dr. Maria Mexi of DIKTIO stressed the timeliness of the discussion given the EU and National elections, where migration remains the central agenda priority across the spectrum. Representatives of PES Women (The Party of European Socialists), the Municipalities of Athens and Thessaloniki, To Potami (a central and socialist-liberal political party in Greece) and DG Home of the European Commission discussed the challenges of integration faced at the national and local levels.  The speakers agreed that when it comes to migration, widespread socio-political polarisation sets limitations to policymaking. Employment was highlighted as conditio sine qua non for integration alongside education, skills and qualification recognition by MP Mavrotas of To Potami. However, the lack of political will in the Greek context threatens the possibility of focusing on integration and instead only promotes a short-term emergency response. The necessary role of the EU to support Greece and the other “first destination” countries was identified as fundamental and Ms. Dimadama of PES women emphasised the need for a better functioning common asylum system. Ms. Psyrra of DG Home stated the Commission’s willingness to promote inclusion through funding tools to better leverage local level capacities and policies. Ms. Lambiri and Mr. Pengas of Athens and Thessaloniki, respectively pressed the fundamental role of municipalities in addressing and implementing integration which has been consistently overlooked and consequently places these local actors in an institutional vacuum. Both shared examples of locally-initiated plans and programs for emergency situations and integration.

The day closed with a panel of best practices of inclusion of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into the labour market with case studies in Germany, Northern Ireland and Spain. Presented respectively by Dr Monika Gonser, Dr Ulrike Vieten and Federica Rosato, they shared examples from profit-companies, non-profit organisations and the public sector.

With the array of perspectives and positions accounted for, all participants stressed the following key points. The first being the critical need for stronger and supportive education and employability programs. Doing so also requires robust methods for skill assessment and accurate job placement. At the European level, all experts called for additional efforts to better coordinate States’ labour needs and asylum systems. Finally, the main takeaways for the Greek context were that its role as a transit country requires integration policies to be designed accordingly, whilst ensuring that all services and infrastructure be accessible to all citizens.

You can find the workshop’s agenda here.

In view of the ongoing reforms of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and related national-level developments, SolidarityNow, along with 18 civil society organisations across Europe, calls on the European Commission to seize this historic opportunity to promote an orderly and efficient asylum system which strengthens the EU’s and Member States’ ability to meet obligations under international human rights law. You can read our concrete proposals laid out in the letter:

Joint letter regarding CEAS reform

by Melina Dunham, Advocacy Intern

October 11 marks the 6^th annual International Day of the Girl. Today’s celebration aims to address both the challenges girls face and to promote their empowerment and uphold their human rights.

In this spirit, it is important to address the issues of women’s reproductive health and sexual violence which remain critical factors of gender inequality, particularly for the vulnerable populations SolidarityNow seeks to defend and support. One manifestation of profound discrimination, which is overlooked and stigmatized, is female genital mutilation (FGM). The World Health Organization defines FGM as “all procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Founded upon sociocultural and religious justifications, this practice has severe and traumatizing effects on the health, well-being, and safety of women in the short, medium, and long term”.

This summer, the European Institute for Gender Equality published a study on the risk of FGM in six Member States: Belgium, Greece, France, Italy, Cyprus, and Malta. The findings revealed that in Greece, an estimated 25% to 42% of migrant girls originating from FGM-practicing countries remain vulnerable to this horrific form of gender-based violence. Despite being condemned and criminalized at both the European and national levels, cases of FGM persist in Greece, partially due to a common practice where girls are temporarily returned to their home country to have the procedures performed.

Raising awareness for this practice is urgent because not only does it impact the health and safety of young girls, but also has profound lifelong repercussions on the survivors’ future agency and empowerment, across all aspects of their lives.

To put an end to this dangerous and dehumanizing practice, actions must be taken at the behavioral, community, and policy levels. The Istanbul Convention – which, among others, criminalizes FGM as a form of gender-based violence and establishes the obligation to recognize it as a form of persecution justifying the right to asylum – needs to be unanimously ratified and implemented by all Council of Europe Member States and the European Union itself. In June 2018, Greece became the 32^nd State to ratify the Istanbul Convention – which has been already reflected in Greek criminal laws and entered into force on October 1, 2018. Beyond adopting a gender-sensitive asylum system that can protect the rights of women migrants and asylum-seekers facing FGM, irrespective of where the offense is committed, Greece can adopt prevention strategies and systems for better legal and health support. This should easily build off the “National Action Plan for Reproductive and Sexual Health”, developed in 2008 which has since expired.

At its core, FGM is a criminalized cultural practice that has serious physical and psychological consequences. For this reason, tackling behavioral changes and cultural norms is a critical first step. Examples of this include training staff working across all relevant sectors (education, health, asylum, social services) in gender-sensitive manners, and engaging men and religious community leaders to both effectively challenge misbeliefs and raise awareness on the psychosomatic consequences and stigmatization caused by FGM. To do so, however, the biggest barrier in Greece is related to data collection and availability; gathering the relevant statistics on the female migrant population and asylum applicants and all those originating from FGM-practicing countries will provide the quantitative foundation and information needed to both fill the gaps and push for policy change. Finally, a strong national Integration Action Plan, which SolidarityNow continues to demand, would tackle the underlying factors of FGM across all levels and eventually dissuade the continuing of the practice.