It’s a very cold March in New York, ice and snow piled up on the street. The atmosphere at the Church Centre for the United Nations which is opposite to the iconic UN General Assembly is celebratory. Women throng the lobby, in colourful attire and determined in their purpose, attending the myriad meetings the building is playing host to during the UN’s 61^st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The ACT Office is located on the 9^th floor of the same building. It is a privilege to overhear the heated discussions that continue to the elevators ranging from patriarchy, to religion to female genital mutilation.

The ACT Alliance Community of Practice on Gender Justice sits together discussing the details that should go into the ACT Alliance oral statement which is to be presented to the CSW.  Brilliant, passionate and committed feminists from the membership of the ACT Alliance, like Gunilla Hallonsten, Elsebeth Gravgaard, Rabia Waqar, Clare Paine and Rita Muyambo, among others, craft the document.

It is a moment where I personally feel privileged to be in the presence of such committed and inspiring people. Women who have devoted their lives to the cause of women’s empowerment. Women who have challenged patriarchy, and continue to do so every day. Representing the women in a faith movement that has not only questioned patriarchal attitudes in religious and faith discourses, but engendered a feminization of faith based world views. A view where women’s rights and human rights take center stage, where bold interpretations of faith take place, unfettered.

The statement takes shape, we try to put into 2 pages the myriad issues that are important, an exercise that is taxing, as all issues are important, each interrelated with the other. We have our limitations. The oral statement is only 3 minutes long, and we need to prioritize.

The group underlines that one of the key areas we as faith based actors need to address head-on is the issue of parallel legal systems based on custom or religion which are excessively influential in many countries. These systems negatively impact women’s legal rights and economic empowerment. Child marriage and other harmful practices, which  are often upheld by  customary law practices, hinder education and sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.

The stand of ACT is unequivocal, “A re-engagement with the parallel legal systems and re-interpretations of religious narratives is crucial for ensuring women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, and can lead to effectively challenging and ultimately dismantling patriarchy.

“ACT Alliance emphasizes the positive role that faith, and communities of faith, can play in achieving gender justice. ACT is a progressive faith voice advocating globally on gender justice to counter the misuse of religion by certain groups that undermine the rights of women and girls.”

The statement recognizes the collaborative efforts to empower women as actors in the political sphere, including the need to engage men and boys to address harmful and discriminatory social norms and practices. ACT emphasizes the need for women to have an equal social and legal status so they can powerfully participate in the full realization of human rights and in the fulfillment of Agenda 2030. The full oral statement can be found on the ACT website.

The presentation of the oral statement was delayed. Rabia Waqar, who was to present the oral statement to the CSW was speaking at another event, when we were informed that the ACT Alliance statement would be called to be presented.  I was given the honour to present the statement, an honour not because of the event in which it was being presented, but because of the women from the ACT Alliance and its partners that the statement represented.

The statement is a testament to those women and men who strive hard to break down barriers of patriarchy, to make women’s equality and human rights a reality.

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Anoop Sukumaran, is the ACT Alliance Regional Representative in Asia and the Pacific

ACT Alliance member the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)’s long-term commitment to promote gender justice by focusing on the media was a catalyst for the consultation “Gender and Media – challenges and opportunities in the post 2015 era” conducted right before CSW61 – this year’s 61^st session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York. As a progressive and human rights-based organization, WACC’s consultation highlighed opportunities to advance women’s communication rights and gender justice in and through media.

WACC began engaging with gender and media in 1987, when women’s role in development slowly started to be recognized, and has led to their 2016 campaign to End News Media Sexism by 2020. This campaign marks and supports intensive efforts to underline gender equality in the media as a human rights issue.

THE MEDIA UPHOLDING STATUS QUO

WACC brought the message to the table during the Gender and Media consultation as 19 project partners from 17 countries participated in the important debate. One of them, Vincent Rajkumar from the Christian Institute of the Study of Religion and Society in India and Vice President for WACC Asia, shared an important angle to the discussion on gender and media:

“It is the responsibility of both men and women in the community as equal partners to engage themselves to strive to regain their freedom and space. The way to retrieve their position is through meaningful media engagements. If the media is dominated by the patriarchal system, constructing alternative media is the only option to educate and emancipate and to work to develop gender sensitivity aided by media”.

Vincent added that the media’s representation of gender in India ignores the societal and structural oppression women face every day. “Media are not focusing on those problems. This negative attitude towards women in real life is very much reflected in the way the media represent them as well. Media representations of Indian women reveal that they are less accepted and respected as persons and more looked upon as objects. Media are hardly challenging the gender attitudes promoted and perpetuated by society”.

“WE NEED TO ACT”

Vincent’s reflections on the objectification of women in Indian media illustrate how critical the topic is. WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project 2015 demonstrated that women make up only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news, exactly as they did in 2010. This is the disturbing reality, which WACC’s General Secretary Karin Achtelstetter points out to stress the urgent need to engage with the issue of ending news media sexism.

“UN Women already understands the vital importance of gender justice in politics, economics, society and culture. WACC’s gender and media work reinforces the approach of UN Women by linking communication rights to sustainable development and to gender equality”, she explains. “One important engagement is to remind news media of their responsibility to uphold ethics on coverage, balance and non-discrimination in terms of gender representations”.

In that way WACC, puts communication rights and gender justice on the agenda to bring the voices of women and girls to the ears of decision-makers who have the ability to change their lives for the better.

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WACC is one of the ACT members who have been participating in CSW61, taking place in New York City March 13-24, 2017.  ACT members engaged on a variety of issues, including gender and media, the role of faith in gender justice, parallel legal structures, access to health care and more.

I am now at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) with a group of very engaged and active ACT Alliance colleagues mainly from our Community of Practice on gender justice. Tuesday (14) New York was practically shut down because of heavy snow fall. UN headquarters and most side events outside the UN building closed. But we were still able to hold the ACT side event hosted at UNFPA, on Protecting bodies, protecting Rights, dealing with religious and cultural laws that can have a negative impact on women’s human rights. We had a very packed room and excellent panellists who also braved the weather.  A red thread in the discussions was that religion is not the problem, but the misuse of religion to oppress and abuse women’s human rights is an increasing problem in many parts of the world and also in international work at UN and elsewhere.

We constantly hear very depressing news of harder struggles by the delegations at the CSW to even maintain human rights language in the text. It really saddens me that instead of being able to move forwards and build on what is already agreed upon in earlier CSWs and other UN gatherings, delegations have to work hard to even maintain the status quo. We need to move the gender equality agenda forward, to the benefit of women and girls and thus to society at large and we definitely cannot afford to move backwards!

On a more positive note, I feel very encouraged to see the increased faith engagement at the CSW. We need to show the diversity of progressive faith voice and as ACT we need to provide a progressive and reflective voice into the debate.

I thus have a call to action to all ACT regional forums and all ACT members to engage actively in their own national contexts and help to elaborate and share religious narratives that contest religious fundamentalism and strengthen women’s rights and promote gender equality.

I encourage ACT members to join the national debates in their respective countries ahead of the next CSW and also to work closely with other civil society organisations including women’s organisations and other faith-based organisations on implementing the outcome of this one.

We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we need, now more than ever, to show that religious narratives can offer part of the solution and be supportive of human rights for all including for women and girls. In a very politicised and polarised world, ACT Alliance is well-placed to offer broader perspectives and opportunity for more reflective and inclusive dialogues, and it must do that.

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Elsebeth Gravgaard works as senior policy and advocacy advisor on Gender Equality and Active citizenship at DanChurchAid. She is also a long-term member of the ACT Communities of Practices on Gender Justice and previous chair of ACT Gender reference group.

The ACT Alliance oral statement was delivered by the Regional Representative – Asia/Pacific, Anoop Sukumaran (photo) to the 61st session of the Commission on the status of Women in the United Nations General Assembly hall.

Respected Chair, your Excellences, thank you for this opportunity in a growing environment where the space for civil society is increasingly shrinking.

I represent the ACT Alliance, a coalition of 144 churches and faith-based organizations working together in over 140 countries. The Act Alliance works on Humanitarian Action, Development, Advocacy and human rights. The alliance is committed to respect,  and protecting the dignity, intrinsic worth and human rights of every woman, man, girl and boy.

The ACT Alliance recognizes commitments to gender equality and justice in existing international instruments and development frameworks such as the CEDAW; the Beijing Platform for Action and resolutions on Women, Peace and Security; the call for systematic transformational change for women and girls’ well-being in the roll-out of Agenda 2030.

Gender equality is not only a basic right, it is also essential for achieving sustained socio-economic growth. Legal frameworks are necessary and crucial for the achievement of gender justice, however, parallel legal systems based on custom or religion are excessively influential in many countries which negatively impact upon women’s legal rights and economic empowerment. Child marriage,  and other harmful practices, which are often upheld by customary law practices, hinder education and sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls. A re-engagement with the parallel legal systems and re-interpretations of religious narratives is crucial for ensuring women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, and can lead to effectively challenging and ultimately dismantling patriarchy.

ACT Alliance emphasizes the positive role that faith, and communities of faith, can play in achieving gender justice. ACT is a progressive faith voice advocating globally on gender justice to counter the misuse of religion by certain groups that undermine the rights of women and girls.

Collaborative efforts to empower women as actors in the political sphere must also include engagement of men and boys to address harmful and discriminatory social norms and practices. Furthermore, we need to recognize the need for women to have an equal social and legal status so that we, as women, can powerfully participate in the full realization of human rights and in the fulfillment of Agenda 2030.

Maternal health and sexual and reproductive health are basic rights for all. Access to sexual and reproductive health rights is a prerequisite of girls’ education and women’s economic empowerment. A reduction in the number of maternal deaths will not be achieved without fulfilment of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health rights. Act Alliance believes that the inclusion of family planning, age-of-consent minimums, access to sexual and reproductive health care and context-appropriate comprehensive sexual education are all essential elements that need further consideration. We know these are expressed in Goal 3 and 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals, and advances this dialogue, but more action is required, and the time is now. Controversy over the social, religious and cultural dimensions of sexual and reproductive health rights and subsequent inaction in addressing them has had a detrimental impact on social equity and sustainable development.

We welcome the increased interest of UN delegations in listening to the breadth of religious voices present at CSW and beyond.

We urge CSW to work to:

• Depoliticize women’s health and provide equal access to health systems, including sexual and reproductive health rights.
• Support and implement policies and legal frameworks of prevention and response to gender-based violence.
• Equal access to an enabling environment for civil society organizations in general and specifically those addressing the issues regarding equal rights and participation of women.

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A short video of the ACT Alliance oral statement that was delivered by the Regional Representative – Asia/Pacific, Anoop Sukumaran to the 61st session of the Commission on the status of Women in the United Nations General Assembly hall.

PRESS RELEASE

NEW YORK, March 15, 2017 – ACT Alliance and the UNFPA hosted a side event at the 61^st Commission on the Status of Women. The event “Protecting bodies, protecting rights – Religious and customary law enabling economic empowerment” explored the gap between women’s legal rights and their ability as individuals to claim them.

Parallel legal systems exist in many countries based on custom or religion which impact upon women’s legal rights and economic empowerment. Child marriage, for instance, which is often accepted in many customary law practices, hinders education and sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.

The panel was composed of experts from around the world on religious law, women’s and girls’ health and gender equality. Dr. Azza Karam, director of the UN Interagency Taskforce on Religion and Development, and Senior Advisor to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) moderated the session held at the UNFPA headquarters.

Åsa Regner, Sweden’s Minister for Gender Equality, Children and the Elderly said that “gender equality preconditions a welfare state and vice versa, they are inseparable.” In Sweden, the government through its emphasis on individual social security, and individual taxation as well as individual parental leave, puts the individual at the centre of the welfare state and not the family as a unit. Regner, who previously served as country director for UN Women in Bolivia, stressed that “women and girls are actors in their own settings, not victims”.

Commenting on how national constitutions are increasingly likely to guarantee gender equality, but many also recognize the authority of parallel legal systems based on custom or religion, Dr. Marwa Sharafeldin, from Musawah, defended that gender equality is very much possible from within a faith narrative, but there are still many challenges at stake. “We should not be bullied by those who use religion to justify oppression against women. We should not accept that religion is used that way”, she said.

“Religion is not really the problem. The real problem is the political will of the state and of policy makers who decide which religious speech fits the law approved by them and which one they ignore”, added Sharafeldin.

For Rev. Dr. Gunilla Hallonsten, ACT Alliance Senior Advisor on Gender, one of the key issues that is the debate on gender and human rights in relation to the interpretation of religious texts. “Customary norms are being confused as the interpretation of religious texts” said Rev Dr Hallonsten.

ACT emphasizes a progressive engagement with the parallel legal systems and interpretations of religious narratives is crucial for ensuring women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, diluting and eliminating the patriarchal perspectives within those systems. “Patriarchy is within our religions, and we need to recognize this fact”, stressed Rev. Dr. Hallonsten.

Dr. Azza Karam, argued that the ACT Alliance is a bridge between the progressive secular feminist discourse and the progressive faith based feminist discourse.

ACT and UNFPA are pleased to have been able to facilitate this discussion. We see this as the beginning of a larger conversation culminating in the achievement of rights of women in all spheres.

ENDS

Pictures of the panel HERE

For further information contact:

Anoop Sukumaran (Anoop.sukumaran@actalliance.org)

Gunilla Hallonsten (Gunilla.Hallonsten@svenskakyrkan.se)

The World YWCA is an ACT Alliance member and also a member of the ACT Gender Community of Practice.  It’s also a global faith based movement impacting over twenty-five million women, young women and girls worldwide. On this 61^st session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, we stand together as the ACT Gender CoP to amplify our collective faith voice to ensure that decision makers review their economic and labour policies and actions substantively to contribute to the fulfilment of the human rights of ALL women, young women and girls. It is a fact that when more women work, economies grow. Investing in women’s economic empowerment is crucial for gender equality, women’s rights, poverty eradication and achieving economic growth for all.

The CSW constitutes one of the most important avenues for the ACT members to engage with. As the designated UN annual platform to review commitments made by governments in regards to women, young women and girls, CSW presents itself as a critical platform to review commitments already made by governments and to advocate for new commitments in areas where they are most needed.

This year,  commitments will be made by governments in accordance with the priority theme on “Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work”. It is important to ensure that the new commitments under this priority theme are in line with and re-inforce the priorities of our faith based organisations. CSW61 is also very important for ACT as it presents itself as an opportunity to develop the leadership and collective power of women, young women and girls to achieve justice, peace, health, human dignity, freedom and a sustainable environment.

For the majority of women, young women and girls, sex and gender discrimination intersect with discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, health, status, age, class, caste, ability, migration status, sexual orientation and gender identity.  This reality  pushes a lot of women who are already marginalized into poverty in a global economic system that privileges the wealthy and men. Millions work as domestic labourers in unsafe and insecure conditions under which they are particularly vulnerable to rights violations. As part of ACT Gender CoP, the World YWCA will engage with the ACT Gender CoP priorities in

• Recognising the positive role that faith, and communities of faith, can play in achieving gender equality and justice. The role of religious communities and leaders in enabling change is crucial in relation to parallel legal systems based on custom or religion laws.
• Analysing the impact of parallel legal systems based on custom or religion: implications on economic opportunities through family, marriage laws and head of household laws that impacts women’s ability to access inheritance, own property, open bank accounts and start businesses.
• The indirect impact from parallel legal systems based on custom or religion laws: legal autonomy and agency through for instance, the practices of child marriage, hinders education and sexual and reproductive health and rights, both crucial enablers for economic empowerment.

We have a voice as a Faith Based Organisation and we will continue to champion and transform inter-generational and shared leadership of women, young women and girls. Through our collective efforts, we have the confidence to break away from the entrenched roles that society has assigned to women.

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Ritah Muyambo is Head of Programmes for World YWCA, a global women’s movement working for women’s empowerment, young women and girls’ transformative leadership and rights in more than 120 countries and 20 000 local communities.  She has experience working with Civil Society Organizations including Faith Based Organisations and NGOs in the area of health and human rights with a focus on human rights and gender equality related to Young Women Leadership, Violence Against Women, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, Economic Empowerment and ICT, Peace and Justice programming.  She has facilitated youth voice particularly young women’s voices through advocacy on national, regional and global level.   She has extensive knowledge and experience in evidence based research programming, development and implementation of community affordable programmes and sustainability of training programmes

March 15, 2017 marks six years of the Syrian conflict.  Since the beginning of the violence, ACT members have been providing humanitarian relief to affected people and communities in Syria and in the surrounding countries.  Please join us in praying for an end to this conflict, and for peace for all those affected, including this Syrian refugee woman who shared her story with ACT member DSPR Lebanon:

“I am a Syrian refugee who fled to Jordan three years ago; I lost my husband during the war. I had to take my four children and escape. You cannot imagine the danger we faced and the fare during our trip. I lost hope and got depressed; my children started wetting their beds while they were sleeping. We struggled to secure our daily needs of food and if it was not for our neighbours who supported us we would be dead now. Now we live in Husn Refugee Camp with our friends. I was afraid to talk to people at the beginning and afraid what the future is hiding.

“I talked to one of my neighbours who told me to visit DSPR at the camp; they will be of great help to you. After great hesitation, I decided to go to the DSPR centre and met the centre supervisor who was very kind with me and allowed me to talk and express myself and offered me the chance to participate in a training workshop for 15 days called “Start Your Business.” At the beginning I hesitated because it’s a long workshop, but at the end I decided to participate.

“We were 25 ladies, we enjoyed participating in such a workshop, we learned a lot about starting a small business, how to start it, how to market for it, how to calculate profit margin, and how to sell my product. At the end of the workshop we received a certificate that made me proud of myself.

“After the workshop, I started thinking of a real project that could support me and my children. I started producing whole wheat bread. With the support of my eldest son Suleiman, we started selling the bread to houses and small supermarkets. The income was small at the beginning but over time it increased due to high demand for such bread. The next step was buying a sealing machine to pack the bread and seal it for better quality and more income. Thank you DSPR Jordan!”

PRESS RELEASE 

ACT Alliance stands as a progressive faith voice for advocacy on gender equality and justice. The 61^st session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York provides the potential for members of ACT Alliance to actively engage and influence the CSW negotiations and the official text of its message.

ACT members will raise awareness of faith-based organizations’ work and ability to challenge existing power structures, harmful and discriminatory social norms and address barriers to gender equality.  The important work of strengthening the visibility of faith voices and faith communities will be put on the agenda at CSW in collaboration with UNFPA and the World Council of Churches at the side event: Protecting bodies, protecting rights – Religious and customary law enabling economic empowerment? on March 14.

“National constitutions are increasingly likely to guarantee gender equality, but many also recognize the authority of parallel legal systems based on custom or religion,” said Gunilla Hallonsten, ACT’s Program Manager for Gender. “Our side event approaches the complex matter of parallel legal systems, which have implications for women’s economic opportunities through family, marriage and head of household laws that impact women’s ability to access inheritance, own property, open bank accounts and start businesses. The gap between women’s legal rights and their ability to claim them is significant.”

The side event will also engage with the depoliticizing of women’s health to achieve equal access to health systems, including sexual and reproductive health rights, and further discuss the implementation of laws at national, regional and global levels to guarantee a life free from gender-based violence, exploitation, discrimination and fear.

ACT, in a statement to the CSW, encourages UN agencies, member states, faith-based organizations and the civil society to act together to protect the rights of women in situations where parallel laws discriminate against women and girls. The statement also calls on these bodies to recognize the active role faith, and communities of faith, can play in promoting women’s economic rights and empowerment.

ENDS

For further information, contact:

Gunilla Hallonsten
ACT Alliance Program Manager for Gender
+46 76 800 01  90
gunilla.hallonsten@actalliance.org

Elsbeth Gravgaard
Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor on Gender Equality and Active Citizenship, DanChurchAid.
+ 45 25502112
eg@dca.dk

As an advisor on gender equality at DCA and a dedicated supporter of gender equality for decades, I am excited to be going to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the fourth time. I will be part of the official Danish delegation and therefore be able to take part in the actual negotiations.  I will also be part of the small but very active ACT team at the CSW.

I very much look forward to the hectic time of meetings, learning, dialogue, laughter and sometimes frustration that always follows the CSW negotiations.

Background to the CSW

CSW is the biggest annual UN event on women’s rights with most nations’ governments and thousands of NGOs in attendance.

The United Nations has previously organized four world conferences on women. These took place in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995).  The World Conference on Women in Beijing marked a significant turning point for the global agenda for gender equality. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, was adopted unanimously by 189 countries and has formed the reference point for global work on gender equality ever since.

For me it is really thought provoking that it has not been feasible to organise another Women’s Conference in over 20 years, mainly out of fear of not being able to agree on some of the difficult issues and therefore risking a backlash on already agreed upon language.

The role of faith-based actors including ACT Alliance

Faith actors will need to challenge existing power structures and address barriers to gender equality, including poverty, unpaid care work, unequal pay, and social marginalization – all of which will be on the agenda in this year’s CSW, which focuses on women’s economic empowerment.

It is very important to strengthen the visibility of faith voices in support of gender equality at the CSW.  We need constructive engagement from the faith community in the struggle for gender justice.   We must also dare to openly discuss all issues, even those where we might not fully agree.  In many UN discussions involvement of faith institutions are seen more as an obstacle to achieve gender equality than as a necessary part of the solution.

ACT Alliance has also recognised this challenge and aims at bringing progressive faith voices to the CSW 61 where we will do global advocacy on gender justice. ACT has to be present and influence the CSW 61 official text and the CSW negotiations. We also hope to mobilise members to engage on a high level at CSW62 and to follow up CSW 61 through advocacy in their regional and national forums.

I am however very happy to recognise that during the years I have participated in the CSW the understanding of the importance of inviting constructive faith voices into the debate has gradually increased with UN and government agencies.

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Elsebeth Gravgaard works as senior policy and advocacy advisor on Gender Equality and Active citizenship at DanChurchAid. She is also a long-term member of the ACT Communities of Practices on Gender Justice and previous chair of ACT Gender reference group.

Europe acted like a dissonant choir when responding to the Trump administration’s travel ban. Is this a surprise? Not really when one looks at the trend of EU’s migration policies in the past two years: the erection of walls and international cooperation to keep refugees and migrants out of sight and out of reach. Is this the Europe that we want? ACT Alliance EU has joined 160 other organisations in asking European leaders to stand up for humanity and dignity and to foster and promote the European Union’s commitments to human rights and international law at home and abroad.

The announcement of the “travel ban” by US President Donald Trump provoked mixed reactions among European leaders. A quick overlook at the various reactions offers an interesting snapshot of Europe’s consensus on asylum and migration.

Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated at the European Parliament that “The EU will not turn its back on anyone who has the right to international protection”. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel lectured president Trump on the virtues of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the phone.  French president François Hollande asked him to show a sense of responsibility. Theresa May who initially did not condemn the ban was finally pressed at the House of Commons to declare: “I’ve made very clear that this policy is divisive and wrong. It is not a policy that we would introduce”.

Nonetheless, the ban found a positive echo in Central Europe. Support came from Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian government’s chief spokesman, Zoltán Kovács already claimed Trump’s election in the US was contributing to “a change of mood in Europe” that vindicated Orbán’s tough position on migration. Meanwhile, Poland’s foreign minister defended President Trump’s immigration order, arguing that every sovereign country has the right to decide its own immigration policy. Writing on Twitter, the spokesperson of President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic said Trump “protects his country” and called for the European Union to take similar measures.

The absence of unanimous condemnation is no surprise when one looks at the reality of EU’s policy vis-à-vis refugees and migrants. We, Europeans, already have our “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall”: the Mediterranean Sea. It is not actually that impenetrable, but is still dangerous enough that 5,096 refugees and migrants were reported dead or missing at sea in 2016 alone. Talking about walls, many have not waited to be inspired by president Trump’s approach to build their own walls on their land borders. In 2015 alone, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria all started construction or announced plans to build fences. In the same vein, Norway built a steel fence at a remote Arctic border post with Russia to deter migration. A one-kilometer “anti-intrusion” wall was built in late 2016 to block access to the northern port of Calais for migrants trying to clandestinely cross the English Channel to Britain. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European countries have built or started 1,200 km of anti-migrant fences, costing at least €500 million ($570 million) –which represents 40% of the US-Mexico border.

On top of this, to deter the ones who would try to reach its continent, the European Union is entering into agreements with other countries where they agree to seal their borders and create the conditions for migrants and refugees to stay in these countries. This approach has huge financial and political consequences as well as human rights implications.

The EU-Turkey deal implies the disbursement of €3 billion funding which are designated for projects to improve the lives of refugees as well as of host communities in Turkey. To quote Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Europe: “The EU-Turkey deal has been a disaster for the thousands who have been left stranded in a dangerous, desperate and seemingly endless limbo on the Greek islands”.  It is presented as a success story by the European Commission and serves as a model for other deals.

Last month, the European Commission announced a plan to disburse 200 million EUR to be shuffled into border control and surveillance in the hope of containing people likely to attempt the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing in the upcoming months. Concerns were raised by civil society organisations,including ACT Alliance and ACT Alliance EU: the decision to transfer the responsibility for managing migratory movements along the central Mediterranean route to Libya will neither reduce human rights abuses, nor end smuggling. Instead, it will significantly increase harm and suffering.

These examples show that instead of countering the rise of xenophobic populists, Europe’s response has too often been to copy their recipes and ignore voices offering sustainable, long-term migration policies that guarantee respect for people’s rights. At the occasion of the European Council 9-10 March, 160+ organisations -ACT Alliance EU among them- reminded that Europe needs to be strong and faithful to its core values which are based on respect for human rights and international law. “Strength doesn’t mean turning away those most in need. Strength is about showing a way forward that upholds values”.

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Agnès Bertrand has more than ten years’ experience in EU external affairs and human rights. She is currently the European refugee crisis advocacy officer for the ACT Alliance, based in Brussels, Belgium, since May 2016 and was previously the Middle-East policy officer for ACT Alliance EU. In her current position, she is charge of advocacy to the European Union in relation to its policies vis-à-vis refugees. Agnes is holds a PhD in International law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and a masters in European law from the Sorbonne. She taught international law at SOAS and external relations of the European Union at Science Po Lille.