You're describing the individual-existential part of it, but on a legal-institutional level those boats with migrants have been crossing the Mediterranean for years (they still are right now) and governments haven't been able to stop them, due to the UN convention I mentioned being part of their national legislation. They can't simply send the boats back and tell them to fuck off, if they do, they get sued by various NGOs and lose because of those legal obligations arising from that country being a signatory to that UN convention.iNcog wrote: ↑02 Jul 2024, 21:04No one cares about migrants risking their lives to leave Africa and establish themselves in a safer country. No one cares about the rights and safety of women being nonexistent in the Middle East or India. No one cares about anyone, but everyone cares about themselves. This is the stark reality in which we live.
And that is the case because governments and politicians don't dare repeal those UN conventions in their national law books for fear of being branded anti-human rights, fascist, blablabla. There would be some serious image problems to be managed if a country like Italy comes out publicly denouncing some UN conventions basically saying: we're not gonna apply those rules on the obligation to help ships at sea that output distress signals because the UN convention is being abused, there are people smugglers who simulate a situation of distress in order to force us to take their clients on our shores and give them asylum. Which is very profitable for them and leads to major political problems for us. So what Italy has been doing, as a cope-solution, has been to externalise the triage of asylum seekers to Albania and also participate together with other EU leaders in a joint effort to fund and motivate governments from North Africa to stop the flow of illegal migrants right on their shores. Which works to some extent, but the people smugglers have also intensified their efforts, actually doubling the number of migrants that end up on Italian and Greek shores.
So that's the state of the game right now, but as I said above, if there's a sea change in European politics and the people openly turn against internationalism, we could see some Euro governments breaking the ice and starting to abrogate some of those UN conventions in their national law, thus effectively putting an end to this mindset and legal reality of governments having an obligation towards everyone in the name of this belief in the universalism of human rights. Because legally and effectively that's what's happening right now: migrants continue to cross maritime borders and get smuggled into Italy and Greece, aided by NGOs, because these countries can be held hostage through their own assumed obligations to apply UN conventions.