My colleagues at the Global Initiative and I have repeatedly argued that securitised responses to human smuggling only exacerbate the problems they are trying to solve, particularly in conjunction with a reduction on legal options for migration. “Cracking down” on smuggling; securing borders, only make a smuggler more essential for people desperate to move. This…
By invitation of the CT-Morse project, a policy advisory, support and monitoring unit for the EU’s programmes in counter-terrorism, I’ve had the pleasure to lead the development of two policy notes: Examining the Nexus between Organised Crime and Terrorism, and its Implications for EU Programming Co-authored with Colin Clarke of Rand / ICCT-The Hague, and Laura…
The morally ambiguous deal that the EU has made with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop the surge of migrants across the Aegean is a mere 8 months old, and it is already failing on multiple fronts. The EU’s €6 billion pact was a Faustian agreement: it may have dampened down the extreme levels…
I’m proud to announce that my first book, Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour, written with Peter Tinti, was published by Hurst Publishers in the UK at the end of September 2016. This book brings together three years worth of research and investigation into one of the most under-examined aspects of the great migration crisis of our time: the migrant…
What began in 2014 as news reports of boats sinking in the Mediterranean has today grown into one of the world’s most tangled of Gordian knots – a profound humanitarian and security challenge affecting millions of people from the UK to the Levant and Afghanistan. It has also set the United Nations and the European…
This week, I spoke to Sky News UK about the challenges of responding to the growing human smuggling industry to Europe.
I was interviewed by José-Fernando Costa Pereira of the European External Action Service for their Newsletter of EU – African affairs (No 5, April 2016). 1. Shall we start with the root causes of organised crime in Africa? In the title of a conference you are about to hold after this interview, there is the word “fragility”.…
Niger became the first country to criminalise migrant smuggling in May 2015. In this article written for the LSE in African Blog, I look at the probability of gaining Niger’s cooperation in tackling the trade. This post is part of the LSE in Africa series African Perspectives on Migration looking at the theme of irregular…
I have twice reviewed the EU Contre Terrorisme Sahel intervention (CT Sahel), a project funded by the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP) (formerly Instrument of Stability (IfS)) of the European Union (EU). The principle objective of the programme is to “support national capacities to combat terrorism and organised crime, and reinforce regional co-operation.”[1] The…
Since 2011 Europe has faced a mounting migration crisis that has played out firstly on its borders, and then within them. A perfect storm of events, including the protracted war in Syria and subsequent mass displacement, instability caused by the Arab Spring, the disintegration of the Libyan state, the withdrawal of international troops in Afghanistan…
Tuesday Reitano 