From 25 to 27 February 2020 the international conference “Externalization of borders: Practices of detention and denial of the right to asylum” took place in Lagos. The event, promoted by ASGI through the Oruka and Sciabaca Projects, aimed at strengthening networks among organizations engaged in strategic actions against externalization policies implemented by the EU and Italy.
Aims and contents of the conference
Participants debated the impact of EU and Italian policies, regulations and bilateral agreements with African states, which are curbing and vilifying the right to asylum. Special attention was paid to victims of human trafficking and how to protect them vis-a-vis the new international scenario created by policies adopted by the EU since 2015, the outbreak of the armed conflict in Libya and the closure of the Mediterranean route through outsourcing pushbacks of migrants and asylum seekers towards African states. Participants also discussed developments in detention policies of migrants and asylum seekers: EU member States are widely exporting such policies to the African continent as a condition for accessing funds and resources for cooperation, thus significantly affecting the development of free movement areas within Africa (such as ECOWAS) and limits their development perspectives.
Towards an international network
The conference in Lagos strengthened ASGI’s motivation to keep pursuing the path it started, for a number of reasons. First, the number of participants: over 150 each day, coming from European and above all African countries. Second, the quality of the presentations and the ensuing debate. Third, the increased knowledge of some African countries’ legal systems. Last but not least, the many newly created synergies with African civil society.
The conference in Lagos represented an invaluable opportunity for analysing the limitations to the right to seek asylum and to the freedom of movement in the African continent, with a specific focus on Nigerian citizens and trafficked Nigerian women, and discussing these topics with various African organizations and legal professionals that deal with externalization policies.
The conference also a landmark step towards the creation of an international network exploring the use of strategic litigation in non-European contexts to counter the effects of border policies on migrants’ rights and the freedom of movement of African citizens.
The conference, which follows the initiatives taken by ASGI in Sudan, Gambia, Niger, Tunisia, Ethiopia, is a further step in ASGI’s activities aimed at building networks and synergies with African society and, significantly, it took place exactly thirty years after the birth of the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration, established on 26.2.1990: there could be no better way to remember this important date than through the proposition of such a significant moment of confrontation.
Podcasts and gallery
The daily podcasts and photographs of the conference are already available and, as soon as possible, the reports and the debate among the many participants, lawyers, academics in law, geography and anthropology, representatives of African and European associations, Nigerian and Nigerian institutions, social and legal operators, European and African associations and NGOs, will be published .
