Countering human smuggling: No silver bullet for safer mobility

The “fight against smuggling” is a key priority for the EU and its member states in their efforts towards achieving more orderly migration. Countering human smuggling is often portrayed as the silver bullet to end movements through irregular pathways and presented as the key remedy for addressing human rights abuses along migratory routes. Evidence, research, and operational insights from the past years’ implementation of the EU approach to human smuggling, however, point to a more complex reality. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) are uniquely placed to provide recommendations towards a more protection-sensitive approach to actions against human smuggling grounded in evidence and based on operational reality. In this position paper, DRC and MMC elaborate on five key recommendations for the EU and Member States to consider in their actions against human smuggling.

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