European lawmakers voted<\/a> in June to allow member states to set up centers outside the EU on their own or in small coalitions, and send rejected asylum seekers there instead of to their home countries.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is something new and it\u2019s groundbreaking,\u201d said Bart van den Brink, the Netherlands\u2019 minister of asylum and migration.<\/p>\n
In early August, a spokesperson for the Rwandan government said it \u201cwas natural\u201d for her government to negotiate with European countries and others to potentially host asylum seekers who are not allowed to live elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Royal FM Kigali, Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo cited an emergency transit mechanism established in Gashora in 2018 for people evacuated from Libya, who could stay there until they were resettled in third countries.<\/p>\n
Makolo said one of the ideas discussed was to offer a \u201csafe place\u201d where people who have nowhere else to go could get medical care, training and rest while their asylum applications were processed, until they could go back home if safe or get resettled to yet another country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be part of a solution to a big global problem,\u201d Makolo said.<\/p>\n
It remained unclear what countries in negotiations with EU nations would gain in return for taking Europe\u2019s rejected migrants.<\/p>\n
Migrant rights groups have criticized European efforts to set up migrant centers abroad where it may be difficult to monitor and enforce human rights.<\/p>\n
In an emailed statement, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O\u2019Flaherty, said \u201cvague assurances of compliance with human rights law are not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStates need to commit to the guardrails necessary to prevent setting up human rights black holes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The European ministers in Copenhagen emphasized the new hubs would abide by European and international law.<\/p>\n
Van den Brink, the Dutch immigration minister, said technical talks and missions to potential partner countries would be used \u201cto gain more insight into the human rights situation and the living conditions of the refugees.\u201d \u201cBecause we want to do this in a European way, in line with our values and international law and human rights at its core.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brussels-based rights group PICUM condemned the meeting in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
\u201cEU leaders may call these centers an \u2018innovative solution,\u2019 but outsourcing migration control is an old tactic to simply move people out of sight and evade human rights obligations,\u201d group director Michele LeVoy said. ___<\/p>\n
Ciobanu writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Philipp Jenne in Vienna and Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark and four other European Union countries agreed Friday on a model for \u201creturn hubs\u201d in non-EU nations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[74896,3030,108,3213,27,26,74900,327,74897,1585,74899,61060,10570,74898,74895,20517],"class_list":["post-159700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-asylum-seeker","tag-austria","tag-copenhagen","tag-country","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-deportation-center","tag-eu","tag-friday-meeting","tag-government","tag-human-right-compliance","tag-migrant","tag-minister","tag-non-eu","tag-return-hub","tag-today"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117214398907806772","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}