Refugees and the EU: Human dignity is at stake An open letter to EU citizens and politicians
Between
May 22 and 25, 2014, EU citizens will elect new members to the European Parliament.
We
are researchers who have come together through an EU-funded COST Action project
on ethical issues in disasters. We work in the fields of disaster medicine and
ethics. As EU citizens, we believe that the EU response to the global refugee
crisis violates human dignity. We urge our fellow EU voters to ensure that the
candidates they support have shown clearly their adherence to the visionary and
humane principles upon which the European Union was founded.
The
number of refugees and internally displaced people in the world is at crisis
point. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) states that 23,000 people were forced to
leave their homes every day in 2012. Over 45 million forcibly displaced people search
for safety. The numbers for 2013 are not available yet, but trends showed the situation
deteriorating, with Sy…