Earlier this month, Greece announced plans to install a floating wall in the Aegean Sea in an attempt to deter refugees from crossing its shores. The measure, however, will do little to address the issues at the heart of the refugee crisis, according to Jacqueline Bhabha, director of research, and Vasileia Digidiki, instructor at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.
In a February 7, 2020 opinion piece in The Guardian, Bhabha and Digidiki argued that the European Union should do much more to stem the crisis. They wrote that underlying problems should be addressed, including the factors that drive people to leave their homes en masse and the lack of effective policies to manage those migrations humanely and efficiently.
As a starting point, Bhabha and Digidiki proposed making investments in migrants’ home countries to strengthen the rule of law and stimulate economic and social development. While this approach will take time and significant resources, “much could be achieved at a fraction of what is already being spent on excluding migrants and border control,” Bhabha and Digidiki wrote.
Read The Guardian op-ed: “Greece’s proposed ‘floating wall’ shows the failure of EU migration policies”