Panel emphasises protection of migrants

A Swiss government advisory commission Monday said that greater focus should be placed on the protection of refugees even before they arrive in Europe, rather than on the refugee crisis that the continent now faces with the influx of thousands of asylum seekers. A list of recommended measures to be taken by Switzerland was published days after a representative from the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) berated Switzerland for not granting more Syrians full refugee status rather than temporary residency. The Federal Commission on Migration wrote in a communiqué that it currently “does not speak of a refugee crisis, but of a crisis in the protection of refugees”. “One can speak of a crisis (of migrants), but this developed because the migration policies of various European Union member states was not up to it,” the commission’s report said. The official advisory group recommended that: “It was also in the area of protection (of migrants) that solutions to the ...