Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1309486
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 NOVEMBER 2020 Evarist Bartolo OPINION A frank view from Malta on migration THE effectiveness of the Global Compact ul- timately depends on its ability to address the specific and particular problems of countries and people around the world. We are the smallest and most densely pop- ulated country in the European Union. We are also the most vulnerable as we are right in the middle of the Central Mediterranean mi- gratory route where departures from Libya and Tunisia have more than trebled this year. We do not have the carrying capacity to take in more irregular migrants and becom- ing a migrant reception centre for Europe will destroy our economy and livelihood for our people. Everyone tells us that we must not be al- lowed to carry this burden on our own. Yet this is what often hap- pens. Relocation has helped a bit but has certainly not solved our problems. In 15 years, our European Union partners took 8% only of our arriv- als. The difficult times we are in: Covid-19 and suffering, anxiety and economic uncer- tainty it has brought with it and the prevail- ing mood of European voters are making it more difficult for our European partners to take their share of ir- regular migrants that reach our shores. As human traffickers continue to send more migrant boats from North Africa towards Europe, we are caught between two extremes which we both reject: let them drown and let them all in. We do not want to do either. But we have no alternative to cooperate with Libya to intercept and take back the boats of irregular migrants. This year we have had over two thousand irregular migrants coming to Malta. Propor- tionately, that is the equivalent of two million arriving in the European Union. Without the help of Libya, over 9,000 would have arrived and it would be a huge crisis and emergency for us, which we cannot allow to happen. We understand that irregular migration is a complex problem and those who provide simple solutions are not realistic. First of all, half of those who come to Mal- ta are not eligible for asylum. While we need to have safe and regular migration, we must do all we can to stop irregular migration and send irregular migrants back to where they came from. And we need to help each other to do that as quickly as possible. We know that the other side of irregular migration is joblessness. We need to engage economically with the countries of origin and have terms of trade that allows them to create wealth and jobs so that young people work in countries where they are born. We must allow these countries of origin to move into manufacturing and services. We need to help transit countries manage their borders better to prevent the human traffickers from carry- ing out their criminal business. We need to take on and attack and bring to justice the human traffickers wherever they are. We must ensure that the centres where ir- regular migrants are kept till their appli- cations are processed are centres where all the persons are treat- ed humanely and their human rights safe- guarded. Relocation remains essential for those who deserve protec- tion and asylum. People having to leave their country is a symptom of big- ger problems: un- employment, wars, persecutions, abuse of human rights, corruption, illicit financial flows from Africa, bad governance, climate change, injustice… treating the symptom without addressing the causes is very short sighted and it is just like putting our finger in the dyke. Sending countries, transit countries, re- ceiving countries… let us do all we can to understand each other and work together to address this global challenge of migration which affects so many millions of vulnerable human beings around the world. This opinion is an official speech given to the First Regional Review of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in the UNECE region even violent assault, than their heterosexual counterparts.) But if I raise these issues again now – just over a decade later – it's not so much because they re- main 'relevant' to the current sce- nario: but because – unlike Edwin Vassallo – Tonio Borg wasn't ex- actly 'chastised' by his own party for making such blatantly homo- phobic remarks, at the time. Still less did his party leader 'dissociate himself' from those sentiments … as Bernard Grech has (commend- ably) done today. No, no: make no mistake. Tonio Borg was not regarded as a 'di- nosaur' for making those claims, back in 2009. Far from it: he was, in fact, merely expressing the Na- tionalist Party's actual ethos on the subject… an ethos that had been deeply ingrained into the PN mindset – and, subsequently, into Maltese legislation – throughout Eddie Fenech Adami's 25-year stint as Prime Minister (and, I need hardly add, even more so be- fore). But in case you're wondering: this particular brand of the 'Reli- gious Right' – for want of a better term – was not even limited just to the PN. Though the Labour Party has certainly done a much better job of reinventing itself, in line with current trends…. I still vaguely remember Labour MPs like Adrian Vassallo (which re- minds me: would it be too much to ask these people to change their surname, before opening their mouths in public? It's getting kind of embarrassing, you know…) ar- guing that 'gay marriage' is "one of the problems which erode our so- cial and family values"… and even associating homosexuality with 'child abuse'…. And OK, I'll admit that it does seem a long time ago now (even if it was only in 2006): but then again, the only real difference be- tween the two Vassallos in ques- tion – apart from the fact that one was Labour, and the other Na- tionalist – is that… well, Adrian resigned from the Labour Party in 2012 (and is therefore, political- ly speaking, very much 'extinct'), while Edwin not only still occu- pies a Parliamentary seat, repre- senting the Nationalist Party, to this day: but he has also just been reconfirmed by the PN as a candi- date for the next election. Whether he will get elected or not, of course, is another ques- tion entirely: but the answer still depends on how widely his prej- udices remain shared – in spite of all the recent legislative changes – among today's broader electorate. And this, in turn, is not exact- ly an easy statistic to calculate… partly because (as evidenced, time and again, in local surveys about racism) people who hold down bigoted, prejudiced views tend overwhelmingly to lie about their own opinions in surveys… so the actual range of the spectrum nev- er quite shows up on the radar. Another reason, however, is that… much as I hate to have to admit it… it is actually quite un- realistic, you know, to expect a population that was almost 100% homophobic until so very recent- ly, to suddenly metamorphose into a population that is almost 100% tolerant of minorities… all in the space of just a few, short years. What this also implies is that, all those achievements I mentioned earlier in the sphere of equality – the cohabitation bill, the trans- position of European directives, the marriage equality act, the in- troduction of divorce, IVF, sex education in schools… you name it – they're all still in danger of conceivably being overturned, through a simple change in gov- ernment, in a not-so-distant fu- ture. So rather than just dismiss the likes of Edwin Vassallo as a bunch of ossified, antiquated 'dinosaurs' … perhaps we should really be thanking them, for so graphically reminding us that the 'struggle for equality' is actually very far from over in this country. And that's because – as long as these dinosaurs refuse to actually go extinct, once and for all – there is always the danger that (just like 'Jurassic World III') they will one day come back with a vengeance; and once again wreak untold hav- oc and destruction, on an unsus- pecting 21st century… We do not have the carrying capacity to take in more irregular migrants and becoming a migrant reception centre for Europe will destroy our economy and livelihood for our people Evarist Bartolo is foreign minister of Malta