Frontex and maritime migration : interception, rescue and human rights

Abstract

The European Union Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the European Union's Member States (Frontex) has come to be a key element in the framework of the European Union's Integrated External Borders model. As an agency of the European Union, which funds operations at the external borders and which operations are conducted through officials and equipment of the Member States, Frontex is bound by the requirements of international law. Evidently, these include human rights requirements, foremost amongst which is the prohibition of refoulment. Whilst search and rescue obligations currently do not fall within the remit of the agency, vessels and officials engaged in Frontex missions are often involved also in search and rescue operations in line with the international legal requirements of saving persons in distress at sea. The scope of this thesis is to provide an overview of the legal requirements which are binding on Frontex, to examine how they have thus far been applied and to propose a number of concrete recommendations on how the situation can be improved in order to ensure that Europe's efforts to stem human smuggling and illegal immigration does not result in violations of fundamental human rights. In Chapter 1, the author provides a background about Frontex and also a set of definitions which are relevant to the subject in hand. Chapter 2 examines when States "may" or "ought" to intervene on vessels engaged in (irregular) maritime migration whilst chapter 3 outlines the human rights concerns that may arise with regards to disembarkation and appraises questions of access to asylum procedures. Chapter 4 focuses on the application of these principles to Frontex, whilst Chapter 5 concludes with a number of recommendations.