Meeting of the SubCommittee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality on Women refugees and asylum seekers in the EU in the EP in Brussels. Statements by Martin SCHULZ, EP President, Mary ROBINSON, Former President of Ireland, Nawal SOUFI, Moroccan-Italian Human Rights activist.

Brussels

statement

meeting

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

SCHULZ, Martin (S&D, DE)

International Women's Day (T)

Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality

ROBINSON, Mary (IE)

Women refugees and asylum seekers in the EU: extracts from the statements by Martin SCHULZ, EP President and by Mary ROBINSON, former President of Ireland - Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/20482565/I117169Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

SOUNDBITE (English), Martin SCHULZ, EP President, I have had and we will continue to have a painful situation. Its hurts to see a very complex problem so often reduced to discussion on whether we should simply close our national borders. Refugees are often portrayed as being a threat to our society. Modest people fleeing from war, leaving everything they have behind, to have a safer place. The refugees' crisis is about people, people that need our help. Increasing share of those people are woman and children.

SOUNDBITE (English), Martin SCHULZ, EP President, Our Union is funded on the rule of law, on solidarity between member states. But over the last months refugees and migrants coming to the EU do not seem to have been handed according to our commonly agreed rules, an it is important principle of solidarity. This is fundamentally unfair, both for the people involved, and also for the limited number of final destinations. They are left to pay the bill. The time has come to return to a system based on agreed rules applied by everyone.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mary ROBINSON, Former President of Ireland, We must recognise what compels a person to leave. In the words of Warsan Shire (poetry) 'no one lives home unless home is the mouth of a shark'. What constitute the shark mouth can vary and interrelate. We are familiar with many factors: persecution, war, civil unrest and poverty.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mary ROBINSON, The EU must immediatelly undertake a coordinated fair and robust response to secure the rights and safety of women and girls seeking asylum and refuge within our borders. Of course that also includes men's, but today we are focusing on women and girls.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mary ROBINSON, The current migration crises illustrates that the world is grossly underprepared for a situation where global migration becomes dramatically exacerbated, due to the impacts of climate change. EU countries in particular should recognise that climate change is already a push factor driving people out of their homes. Often those affected are the poorest and most vulnerable. This problem will get worst, so EU leaders need to prepare structured and human response now, which both enables displaced people to resettle in EU countries and helps their countries of origin to become more resilient to climate change.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), SOUFI Nawal, Human Rights activist, Bottles like these, women life depend on two bottles of water. If we talk about refugees, we have to talk about these two bottles. This is their life vest. It's a live vest to use in the high sea for all of those people who didn't manage to buy a proper life vest in Turkey, or Libya, or Egypt. They didn't had enough money, maybe the peoples smugglers have taken away all of their possessions.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), SOUFI Nawal, Human Rights activist, It's been 10 years now the Mediterranean has turned red. I see it red as my generation is living a second holocaust. I'm not talking about numbers when we are talking about holocaust. What I'm talking about is looking on and keep silent. The Mediterranean is like a concentration camp, where people are dying every single day, suffering. The characteristic that links us to the nazi era is that we carrying on our daily life's and pretending that nothing has happened. We still are letting people dying in the Mediterranean.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), SOUFI Nawal, Human Rights activist,, I think it is time first to open safe passages. Maybe it is time to let people reach Europe through legal routs. I repeat, legal routs, because at the moment Europe is inreachable. The only way you can get in is by paying the mafia. As an European I'm not afraid of the migrants, I'm afraid of the mafia that are organising the journeys. I'm afraid of the state of my conscience in 25 years' time when I have to tell all of this to my children.