CALAIS, FRANCE \u2014 Three migrants were reported dead on Wednesday by the French Maritime Prefecture. The bodies were recovered as 45 migrants were rescued during a failed attempt to cross the English Channel from France to the UK.<\/p>\n
In June, Reform UK released a four-point plan to \u201cstop the boats.\u201d In their plan, they claimed that the UK government could start \u201cpicking up illegal migrants at sea and returning them to France.\u201d Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, repeated the claim on Question Time in June and then again on BBC Radio Kent in September. Richard Tice, member of parliament and former leader of Reform UK, tweeted in September, \u201cStarmer needs to explain why he does not have leadership & courage to use 1982 UN Convention of Law at Sea to pick up & take back\u201d<\/p>\n
So, can the UK return migrants at sea to France?<\/p>\n
\u201cNot without the consent of the French, \u201d according to James Turner KC, a barrister at Quadrant Chambers specializing in maritime law. \u201cArticle 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not allow the unloading of migrants in other nations\u2019 territorial waters \u201ccontrary to the immigration laws\u201d of that country\u201d.<\/p>\n
In January 2018, the British and French governments signed the Sandhurst Treaty. The agreement outlined how the governments would cooperate to reduce illegal migration across the Channel. However, the agreement makes no provision for returning migrants intercepted at sea to France. There is only agreement that \u201cMigrants rescued at sea will be taken to a port of safety in accordance with international maritime law.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe channel, and indeed a lot of littoral waters, are divided up into search and rescue zones and different states have responsibility in each of them\u201d explains James Tuner KC. \u201cBut just because, say, the UK has responsibility for search and rescue in Zone X it doesn\u2019t stop France coming and helping if they have ships in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July, a British Border Force vessel assisted French authorities in a search and rescue operation and returned the rescued migrants to France for the first time.<\/p>\n
At the time, a Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: “A Border Force vessel was sent to support French vessels in the operation, coordinated by French authorities.”<\/p>\n
James Tuner KC said, \u201cIf they were picked up in British waters then the appropriate port of safety will be a British one because otherwise you\u2019re crossing an international boundary with [the migrants].\u201d<\/p>\n
Felix Thompson, spokesperson for aid collective Calais Appeal, said, \u201cAlthough we would never encourage migrants to make the crossing, we tell them that if they do and are in distress, they should contact us as well as the emergency services. That way, we can try and get them help too and it\u2019s on the record that the authorities knew a boat was in distress.\u201d<\/p>\n
In November 2021, 31 migrants died crossing the channel when their boat capsized in the English Channel. \u200b\u200bAt the time, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) called the incident the worst single incident of lives lost since it began collecting data in 2014. A French inquiry in the aftermath of the incident found that the migrants on the boat had repeatedly called French and British search and rescue authorities but received no assistance, despite a French coast guard vessel being in the vicinity. The boat had capsized around midnight, but was not attended to until the next afternoon when a fishing vessel saw bodies in the water and raised the alarm. Many of the migrants who died had frozen to death in the water since the boat had capsized. Five French soldiers have since been charged by French police for failing to prevent the loss of life.<\/p>\n
Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to discuss migration. The Prime Minister told journalists that Italy\u2019s deal with the UN-back Libyan government and the Tunisian government \u201cappears to have had quite a profound effect.\u201d He said, \u201cPreventing people leaving their country in the first place is far better than trying to deal with those that have arrived in any of our countries, so I was very interested in that.\u201d The number of people arriving in Italy from Africa has dropped by 64% this year.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what lessons the Prime Minister is hoping to draw from his visit to Italy, however. French police already patrol beaches around Calais and Dunkirk and prevent migrants from leaving French shores where they encounter them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Italians in the past have been very naughty about what they have done with refusing refugees to be landed in their ports. They have also offended against the principle of refoulement,\u201d said James Tuner KC. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Italian government had violated international human rights law by returning more than 200 migrants intercepted at sea to Libya, their point of departure.<\/p>\n
During the Boris Johnson Conservative government, Home Secretary Priti Patel drew up plans for a \u201cpush-back policy\u201d under which border force vessels would forcibly push migrant boats back into French waters. The plans were abandoned, however, in the face of legal challenges. It was also thought that the chance of endangering migrant lives was so great that the policy was unworkable in practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international legal framework of the Refugee Convention and the Safety of Life at Sea Convention and the Search and Rescue Convention and the Collision Regulations all conspire against doing anything radical to ships at sea\u201d said James Turner KC, who was involved in the legal challenge to Patel\u2019s policy. He added, \u201cI do not think the solution to migrant crossings is a legal one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The debate as to how to prevent migrants crossing the channel continues as the IOM has raised the death count for migrants crossing the channel in 2024 to 52, making it the deadliest year of crossings since 2018.<\/p>\n
Zoe Sigman, an analyst at the IOM\u2019s Missing Migrant Project, said, \u201cWe can never say that we have captured all of the data and in fact we know that we don\u2019t capture all of the data.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CALAIS, FRANCE \u2014 Three migrants were reported dead on Wednesday by the French Maritime Prefecture. The bodies were recovered as 45 migrants were rescued during a failed attempt to cross the English Channel from France to the UK. In June, Reform UK released a four-point plan to \u201cstop the boats.\u201d In their plan, they claimed<\/p>\n