About Migrant and Refugee crisis Europe 2015 to 2019:

• A refugee is a person who is outside the country of his nationality and cannot return to it for ‘fear of persecution’ on grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. This ‘fear’ must be ‘well-founded’ for the grant of refugee status by international organizations like the UN. If the “fear of persecution” is unfounded then a person who is seeking refugee status can be deported.
• Overwhelmed by the prospect of granting refugee status to tens of thousands of West Asian Muslims, most European countries have reacted by simple throwing their moral compass away.
• Since the end of World War II, these countries owned the human rights narrative as a proprietary feudal asset. They lectured the Global South on human rights. They used it as a tool of their foreign and economic policy. They spoke passionately about the universalisation of human rights. But in 2015, as refugees from West Asia stream into Europe, all these fine principles have been cast aside.
• Most European countries are signatories to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and are legally bound to uphold the principle of ‘nonrefoulement’– which forbids the rendering of a true victim of persecution to his or her persecutor. European countries are ethically and legally bound to “not return” these fleeing people to a situation where their life is at risk.
• However, other EU states have either refused to take part in allocation schemes or, like Hungary and Bulgaria, have put up fences around their borders to keep refugees out.
• Tens of thousands of persons have entered Hungary in recent months, mostly en route to Germany and other northern European countries, but Hungarian law makes it illegal for civilians in Hungary to help them get there, prohibits offering free rides to people who’ve entered the country illegally and without a visa and even grants Hungarian police and military extraordinary powers to search private homes if they suspect someone of harboring illegal migrants.
• If there was ever a moment when the entire architecture of modern international law has been so summarily put to disuse, then this is it. This is the time for developed countries in Europe to take the lead in co-creating new approaches in international law, upholding existing guidelines for refugees while pushing for even more humane standards.