Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, head of research at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, will give a key-note speech on Friday at the Nordic conference on European Migration and Asylum Policies for the Future in Oslo.
The Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg will open the event, which is a platform to discuss topics such as how the EU can manage its borders while honoring its obligations under international law.
Gammeltoft-Hansen will call for a paradigm change in our approach to global refugee policy. “Since the 1990s, the primary, some would say the only, response of European and other wealthy states to refugees has been to build taller walls or strike more deals with other countries to contain refugees where they are,” Gammeltoft-Hansen says.
He argues that there is growing evidence that these deterrence policies are not sustainable. “The deterrence paradigm has produced a garbled refugee regime, leaving the majority of the world’s refugees in permanent limbo, dependent on aid, feeding a growing transnational human smuggling industry and forcing more and more refugees to risk their lives at Europe’s borders in order to secure a right to a future,” he says.
The conference is taking place Friday 21 October 2016, 08:30–16:00 in Olso.