Asylum seekers need access to COVID-19 vaccine, says UN’s migration agency

BRUSSELS — Asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants in the EU should have equal access to promising COVID-19 vaccines, the head of the UN's migration agency told the European Parliament on Thursday.

"It is for the sake of their safety and well-being of the entire host communities" in the countries taking them in, said Antonio Vitorino, director general of the International Organization for Migration.

He was one of several high-profile speakers dialing in for a virtual conference organized by the European Parliament and Germany on migration and asylum in Europe.

Announcements in recent days that coronavirus vaccines developed by German and US companies appear to be highly effective prompted Vitorino to plead for them to be given also to migrants, if and when Europe starts giving jabs to its population.

"No one is safe until everybody is safe," the IOM chief said.

"When we have now news about a vaccine, the challenge that EU European member states are confronted with, is to guarantee access to the vaccine to everybody that is in your territory, not just your citizens, but also all the refugees, displaced people and migrants that are in Europe," he said.

Vitorino also urged the European Union to push ahead with a reform of its asylum and migration policy put forward by the European Commission.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating "extra pressures" fueling migratory flows, he said, noting that "the Sahel is exploding," with consequences for all of west Africa.

Libya, a restive transit country for many migrants seeking to get from Africa to Europe by perilous boat journeys in the Mediterranean, "is not a safe port of disembarkation," Vitorino said.

Migrants there "live in utterly below minimum humanitarian conditions," he said, in what could be seen as veiled criticism of EU policy of using Libya as a buffer zone.

'System no longer works'

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the conference that "the current system no longer works," with divisions laid bare after Europe coped with a dramatic influx of asylum-seekers in 2015.

"A solution on migration that fully satisfies everyone does not exist," she admitted.

She underlined tensions between frontline states such as Greece, Italy and Spain that receive the bulk of asylum-seekers and migrants entering Europe illegally in search of better living conditions, and other member states that were refusing to take in shares of those arrivals.

The Commission's plan is to step up returns of economic migrants while reinforcing legal channels for immigration. EU countries refusing to take refugees would be asked to contribute financially to those who will.

Next week, von der Leyen said, the EU executive will present an action plan on better integrating migrants, for the 2021-2027 period.

"We need to come together on this issue. And we need to discuss and we need to find compromises," she said. — Agence France-Presse