As Russia has stationed tens of thousands of troops along the Ukrainian border, the fear of a full-scale invasion has pushed individuals in Ukraine to escape the country. In the backdrop of fears of a regurgitation of a WWII-esque European invasion by Russia and the scale of inevitable civilian deaths, 2 million people have begun to flee Ukraine to neighbouring countries. That number is projected by the United Nations to hit 7 million – pushing this situation to a full-blown refugee crisis akin to the likes of Europe during WWII.
However, while Ukraine’s closest neighbours open their borders to any and all Ukrainian refugees, the United Kingdom has not been as generous in their acceptance. According to the UN, Ukraine’s immediate neighbour Poland has taken in approximately 1.2M refugees and anticipates the number reaching 2M. Hungary has accepted 191K individuals and has given then food, clothing and some children a place in local schools. Romania has taken in 143K people and has plans to fund housing for 70,000 of those refugees.
Evidently, as the distance grows further for a refugee to travel, the numbers decrease: France has only accepted 2,500 individuals, Germany has accepted 30,000 individuals. With this in mind, the U.K.’s protection of only 300 refugees may make sense – the U.K. is an island, which is further and harder for refugees to travel to. Regardless, Parliament has announced the decision to only accept refugees with relatives in the UK thus limiting the amount of refugee protection they are offering. Even within this family scheme, the UK has failed the refugees making over 17,000 individuals travel from Calais to Paris or Brussels in order to process their visa – putting bureaucratic processes before protection of human rights in a global crisis.
Under the UCHR, Article 3 protects an individual’s right to life, liberty and security. The effect of involving such bureaucracy within the protection of human rights makes evident that the two cannot co-exist. Fixation on visas and extensive paperwork has the impact of lengthening the period of time before a refugee is secure. This is not to say we should abolish the process of visas or background checks of said refugees. In fact, some of these are arguably necessary; for example, the current requirement at the border of Warsaw that adults travelling with children have their birth certificates serves the purpose of protecting the child as well as serving the purpose of regulating who enters the country. With this said, greater importance should be placed on the actual security of the individual first. Once an individual is secure and has shelter, the verification of identity and granting of a visa can go underway – thus balancing the necessary bureaucratic processes with the protection of the vulnerable without subjecting the individual to the process in the midst of their search for safety.
As well as this, there has also been questions at the Ukrainian border of the lack of protection of non-citizens fleeing Ukraine. One Nigerian medical student studying in Ukraine, Jessica Orakpo, spoke to BBC about how she was refused boarding onto a bus to Poland as a result of her lack of citizenship. After walking for 12 hours, she was forced to walk another 6-8 hours to take a train to Hungary – she reported that the issue was not at the Polish border but the Ukrainian border where she was refused security and protection (as pursuant to UCHR protections) for lacking citizenship.
At the Ukrainian border, individuals fleeing must stamp out before being allowed entry into another country as refugee, therefore any trouble at the first border means an individual may become stuck in Ukraine as a result. There is then a fear that this citizenship requirement challenges one’s Article 3 right to security – what implications flow from offering human rights protection only to citizens? How weak are our human rights protections if they can be ignored even in the midst of a humanitarian crisis?
In response to the growing number of refugees, the UN is preparing a scheme to grant individuals fleeing from Ukraine a right to stay and work in 27 nations for up to 3 years. This protection includes access to housing and education and applies to any Ukrainian nationals with permanent residence. Extending the human right protection to permanent residents will protect more refugees, but, while Ukraine is attempting to restrict access to other borders to citizens, this issue remains prevalent. Overall, the UN should move to substitute the current processes with ones that delay bureaucracy and prioritise the protection and security of the refugee.
