Introduction
In May 2024, the European Union (EU) signed a new agreement with Lebanon that aimed to control irregular migration to Europe. Announced during a visit to Lebanon by the EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen and Cypriot President, Nikos Christodoulides, the deal’s purpose was to provide Lebanon with €1 billion between 2024 and 2027 to assist with economic development, regulatory reforms, security, border management, combating people smuggling and trafficking networks, and voluntary returns of people to Syria. In return, Lebanon was expected to participate in efforts to prevent irregular migrants from travelling to Europe.Footnote 1 Following similar agreements with Türkiye,Footnote 2 Libya,Footnote 3 Tunisia,Footnote 4 Egypt,Footnote 5 and Mauritania,Footnote 6 this agreement was just one in a line of arrangements the EU made with neighbouring countries from the 2010s to externalise its borders and reinforce ‘fortress Europe.’Footnote 7
Developing bilateral agreements to prevent irregular arrivals at European borders is nothing new. Scholars have documented the extensive nature of the EU’s non-entrée policies,Footnote 8 how its migration policies have been influenced by criminal law,Footnote 9 securitization,Footnote 10 biopolitics,Footnote 11 and humanitarian norms,Footnote 12 as well as how these policies have made migration pathways more dangerousFootnote 13 and undermined international refugee and human rights law.Footnote 14 However, what has not been adequately examined is the impact that these cooperative bilateral partnerships between the EU and non-EU states have had on the international solidarity principle. Reflected in the United Nations (UN) Charter and international legal treaties ranging from human rights law,Footnote 15 refugee law,Footnote 16 environmental and trade law,Footnote 17 and regional organisation treaties,Footnote 18 the international solidarity principle is key to guiding the interpretation of international law, state conduct, and the provision of mutual aid in international society.Footnote 19 It is acknowledged that the international solidarity principle is a crucial element within the Refugee Convention, helping to facilitate cooperation between states to uphold refugee rights and develop equitable responsibility sharing arrangements to support the displaced.Footnote 20
The EU has interpreted its bilateral partnerships with non-EU countries as acts of solidarity by encouraging cooperation to prevent irregular arrivals, combating people smuggling and trafficking networks, preventing deaths at sea, and upholding responsibility sharing obligations toward asylum seekers and refugees.Footnote 21 However, what constitutes an act of international solidarity in this instance is unclear. How has the EU interpreted the international solidarity principle when developing these external partnerships? And what impact has its interpretation had on the rights of asylum seekers and refugees? This article argues that the EU’s bilateral migration arrangements with non-EU states represent an abuse of the international solidarity principle. The EU and its Member States have strategically reinterpreted this principle to suit their migration deterrence interests. The interpretation of the solidarity principle was shaped to fit, and was shaped by, the EU’s broader migration externalisation framework. Not only have these agreements emasculated the international solidarity principle by undermining its constitutive elements, but they have also weakened a human rights approach to international solidarity through the violation of asylum seeker and refugee rights.Footnote 22
To demonstrate how the EU has abused the international solidarity principle, this article argues that the EU’s interpretation is designed to decouple the principle from its human rights elements and help it and Member States evade their legal obligations to asylum seekers and refugees. Contestation and differing interpretations are an everyday part of international legal and political life. However, international actors cannot define norms and laws however they like. This article analyses international legal instruments, human rights and United Nations reports, as well as how actors such as states, NGOs, international organisations, and scholars have interpreted human rights-based obligations as integral to the international solidarity principle and its role in responding to asylum and refugee movements. Based on this analysis, the article examines how the international solidarity principle has been used, and abused, in international society. This moves beyond the legalFootnote 23 or normative analysisFootnote 24 of international solidarity and brings to the forefront of analysis how the intertwining of international law and international politicsFootnote 25 plays an important role in how states interpret their solidarity obligations and execute them in practice.
This article makes an important contribution to the analysis of the international solidarity principle in several ways. First, its focus is not on solidarity and responsibility sharing among EU member states, which has been extensively studied.Footnote 26 Rather, it concerns how the international solidarity principle, as a legal principle, has been interpreted in migratory agreements between the EU and non-EU states, which remains underexplored. Second, this analysis of solidarity with non-EU partners advances the scholarship in International Relations (IR) and International Law (IL) on the role of norm evasion.Footnote 27 It shows how the EU’s and Member States’ evasion strategies were shaped, and limited by, the broader policy framework of border externalisation. Institutional dynamics, pressures, and objectives played a profound role in influencing how the norm was interpreted and exercised. However, the role of these dynamics has not been given adequate attention in the norm evasion literature. And third, the article sheds light on the relationship between human rights and the international solidarity principle. Scholars have focused on solidarity in responsibility sharing arrangements, however, the role that the solidarity principle plays in upholding and realising human rights has been given less attention. This article argues that human rights are crucial to international solidarity, and that rights need to be protected in both the process and outcome of exercising solidarity.
The first section defines the international solidarity principle and highlights its relationship with human rights-based obligations to asylum seekers and refugees under international law. It also shows how these rights and obligations have been interpreted by international actors. The second section explains what is meant by ‘abuse’ of the international solidarity principle and how the EU’s norm evasion was shaped by its externalisation policy framework. The third section shows how this abuse undermines the solidarity principle and human rights frameworks before concluding with the implications this argument has for the international solidarity principle and the human rights protections for asylum seekers and refugees.
The international solidarity principle and responsibility to refugees
International solidarity is an integral part of international society.Footnote 28 Although there is no universal definition of solidarity under international law, it is generally understood within the normative literature as cooperation with others to achieve a common goal.Footnote 29 Vattel, for example, recognised it in his Law of Nations as a moral duty to provide ‘mutual assistance’ to others.Footnote 30 Moreover, solidarity has been considered a crucial principle in helping expand moral boundaries beyond the sovereign state to transform the political community,Footnote 31 including shaping what obligations states have toward refugeesFootnote 32 and how those obligations should be distributed.Footnote 33 A term that is close to solidarity is solidarism, which the English School of International Relations employs in relation to international society that ‘exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and … values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.’Footnote 34
Over the years, these normative principles have been codified into international law. The international solidarity principle is now considered a general principle of international law and is embedded in both hard and soft lawFootnote 35 in a variety of treaties and declarations. It underpins the UN Charter,Footnote 36 the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States,Footnote 37 a variety of laws ranging from trade and the environment,Footnote 38 and international and regional human rights law as well.Footnote 39
The international solidarity principle provides legal obligations for states to cooperate in responding to asylum seekers and refugees. It is widely recognised that responding to refugee and asylum movements cannot be done by any one state alone, and international solidarity is, therefore, crucial to responsibility sharing.Footnote 40 The Preamble of the 1951 Refugee Convention states, ‘Considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognised the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international co-operation.’Footnote 41 International cooperation on asylum seekers and refugees is further reinforced in hard and soft laws, such as the 1967 Declaration on Territorial Asylum (art. 2)Footnote 42 and the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees,Footnote 43 as well as regional declarations, such as the 1984 Cartagena Declaration (Preamble)Footnote 44 and the 1969 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (Article 2(4)).Footnote 45
However, despite international solidarity being firmly embedded within international and regional refugee frameworks, the legal status of responsibility sharing practices is contested.Footnote 46 Cooperation has legal foundations, but responsibility sharing practices are not legally binding.Footnote 47 Moreover, it is debated whether responsibility sharing practices refer to moral or legal actions.Footnote 48 There is also no one way to practise solidarity through responsibility sharing. Acts of solidarity can include incorporating international refugee law into domestic law, admitting refugees,Footnote 49 providing financial and material support to host countries or organisations, such as the UNHCR,Footnote 50 or developing regional frameworks to assist with responsibility sharing, such as the Mexico Declaration and Plan of Action to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees in Latin America.Footnote 51 Different responsibility sharing proposals have also been suggested. These include models of ‘common but differentiated’ responsibilities,Footnote 52 prosecuting state leaders that produce refugees,Footnote 53 giving more power to the UNHCR to allocate quotas, distributing finances, and taking over responsibility for refugee determination,Footnote 54 ensuring refugee preferences are considered in decision making processes,Footnote 55 and encouraging refugees to remain within neighbouring states with wealthy countries funding development projects in host states.Footnote 56
The contestation around how responsibility sharing is exercised occurs within a wider legal context which recognises that whatever responsibility sharing policy is implemented, it must be consistent with international human rights frameworks. That is, the international solidarity principle occurs within, and promotes, human rights, including refugee rights. In several reports stretching back decades, the UNHCR has consistently argued that international solidarity involves upholding human rights and humanitarian obligations. In a 1988 report to the UN General Assembly, the UNHCR argued that the international community had a responsibility to work together in responding to refugees and that the international solidarity principle is crucial in helping to both facilitate this cooperation and uphold obligations to humanitarian principles.Footnote 57 The link between international solidarity and human rights was developed further in a 2012 State of the World’s Refugees report in which the UNHCR outlined three elements of cooperation in responsibility sharing:
First, international cooperation is a complement to states’ responsibilities and not a substitute; states cannot devolve their responsibilities to international organizations. Second, the underlying objective of cooperative arrangements must be to enhance refugee protection and prospects for durable solutions. Third, cooperative arrangements must always be guided by the basic principles of humanity and dignity, and aligned with international refugee and human rights law.Footnote 58 (Emphasis added).
For the UNHCR, international solidarity must be done in conformity with human rights, and its purpose is to uphold rights.
Obligations to asylum seekers and refugees under the international solidarity principle, and the solidarity principle’s connection to human rights, have been developed further through the 2023 UN Draft Declaration on the Right to International Solidarity (hereafter Draft Declaration). Crafted by the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity, it outlines duties and obligations of states and non-state actors that come with a right to international solidarity for a variety of global issues, such as climate change, sustainable development, and human displacement.Footnote 59 The Draft Declaration represents the culmination of discussions with states, other international actors, legal experts, and NGOs on the principle of international solidarity and how it should be applied in international society. From the outset, a clear connection has been made between the practice of international solidarity and human rights in the Draft Declaration. Article 1 defines international solidarity as ‘an expression of unity by which peoples and individuals enjoy the benefits of a peaceful, just and equitable international order, secure their human rights and ensure sustainable development.’Footnote 60 This offers a much stronger definition than the definition of solidarity found in the normative literature mentioned above, and it is the definition used in this article as it better emphasises that international solidarity is intertwined with human rights. The international solidarity principle serves to promote the realisation of human rightsFootnote 61 and makes the primary beneficiaries of international solidarity peoples and individuals.Footnote 62
The Draft Declaration identifies three components of the international solidarity principle that generate different obligations and duties regarding human rights. The first is ‘preventive’ solidarity. This is the duty on all states and non-state actors to uphold their obligations under international law.Footnote 63 Respecting international human rights law, including specific human rights conventions, declarations, and principles, such as the 1951 Refugee Convention, is a means to exercise solidarity with others. The second is ‘reactive’ solidarity. This involves working together to respond to crises, such as natural disasters, pandemics, or mass displacement of people.Footnote 64 And the third element is international ‘cooperation,’ which brings international solidarity into existence.Footnote 65 However, international solidarity is not about cooperation per se. According to the Draft Declaration, international solidarity aims to generate cooperation based on just and ‘fair partnerships’Footnote 66 for the achievement of human rights goals.Footnote 67 The Draft Declaration recognises that international solidarity cannot just have human rights promotion as an outcome of cooperation, but that human rights are also part of the process of cooperation.Footnote 68 In doing so, cooperation furthers both preventive solidarity, through respect for international law, and reactive solidarity, through equitable and fair cooperation.
In the context of responding to refugee movements, the solidarity principle refers to solidarity between states on refugee movements as well as solidarity with refugees.Footnote 69 It is also applicable to states and non-state actors.Footnote 70 To uphold the international solidarity principle involves respecting asylum and refugee rights (preventive solidarity) and implementing ‘refugee and migrant-centred approaches’Footnote 71 to responsibility sharing arrangements (reactive solidarity) through cooperation that incorporates human rights in the process of cooperation as well as the outcome. The Draft Declaration, and the UNHCR position on solidarity, provides useful international guidance to understand how international solidarity can be practised through a human rights framework to respond to asylum seeker and refugee movements.
However, despite the strong connection between the exercise of the international solidarity principle and human rights under international law, states have battled over what their obligations are to refugees and how to implement them. These political struggles have left the international solidarity principle vulnerable to abuse. This has, in turn, both undermined the connection between international solidarity and human rights and weakened key protections for asylum seekers and refugees.
Abuse of the international solidarity principle
The interpretation of obligations under international law is part of the tussle of geopolitical influence. International law is constantly interpreted and re-interpreted by states, human rights groups, intergovernmental organisations, international and national courts, and other actors. Scholars have argued that law, to follow Wittgenstein, is determined through language games where meaning is constructed in context and practice.Footnote 72 Argumentation is a normal legal practice, but the open-textured nature of laws means that actors contest the meanings and applications of laws and norms.Footnote 73 How these norms and laws are interpreted plays an important role in the exercise of power in international society as states use it strategically to try and justify or legitimise their own conduct.Footnote 74 These interpretations can expand rights protections for asylum seekers and refugees, or states can also use the law to restrict rights,Footnote 75 evade obligations,Footnote 76 and abrogate responsibility.Footnote 77 In other words, interpretations can justify the reduction or expansion of space for human activities, including rights and freedoms.
The contestation of normsFootnote 78 and the intertwining of politics and law may be a normal aspect of international society, but it does not mean actors can define them however they like. International norms and laws are expected to be interpreted and defined in good faith.Footnote 79 Struggles over interpretations, and which interpretation becomes authoritative, occur between different actors, such as states, international organisations, courts, ‘politicians, scholars, journalists, international civil servants, or NGO workers’Footnote 80 within an interpretive community.Footnote 81 As Johnstone argues, interpretive ‘communities emerge from discursive interaction in the international legal system, and they help to define the rules and norms that become embedded in institutions.’Footnote 82 In doing so, interpretive communities help to interpret rules and laws, translate them into policy, and demarcate acceptable from unacceptable understandings of the law.Footnote 83 Interpretive communities, through the act of re-presenting meanings of phenomena, construct realityFootnote 84 by providing both a level of stability to the meaning of concepts, norms, and laws but also contestation and change as different actors compete for authoritative interpretations over time.Footnote 85 This stability and change can apply to the laws and norms under scrutiny by the interpretive community, but also the interpretive community itself, as the community shifts and changes according to historical norms and expectations of who can, or should, be part of the community.Footnote 86
Interpretive communities within the sphere of refugee rights and obligations have been debating what types of actions are attached to responsibility sharing, how they are to be applied equally, and what are the obligations of various actors. However, such interpretations cannot be infinite. Hence, interpretive communities set boundaries of what is considered an appropriate understanding or meaning of a norm or law. As Johnstone argues, ‘Interpretive communities set the parameters of acceptable argumentation – the terms in which positions are explained, defended, and justified.’Footnote 87 In general, interpretive communities have the power to shape environments in which knowledge is produced and shared, and so the contestations and battles that occur within them play a powerful role in setting boundaries of acceptable from unacceptable understandings.Footnote 88 In doing so, they can de-legitimise interpretations, actions, and policies of powerful states, using judgements of actions to target state reputation and ethical standing to reinforce international norms, rules, and laws.Footnote 89 Thus, interpretive communities place limits on the understandings of norms and laws, thereby constraining state behaviour.
The EU’s interpretation of the international solidarity principle goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable interpretation and constitutes an abuse of the principle. It constitutes an abuse because the EU has defined the principle to serve its migration deterrence goals by helping the EU and Member States evade their human rights and refugee obligations under international law. The UN Independent Expert on International Solidarity argues that abuses of the principle occur
in ways that allow certain States to – in effect – evade in whole or in part, or to seriously violate, their international legal obligations under the 1951 Convention and other regional refugee instruments, or under their other international human rights obligations. These policies, actions and arrangements are abuses of the international solidarity principle and, all too often, have highly negative impacts on the human rights of refugees.Footnote 90
The evasion of international legal norms in the migration policy space is not new. Scholars have shown how states utilise specific strategies to violate norms but keep the law intact,Footnote 91 how states utilise evasion to protect in-group self-esteem,Footnote 92 exploit the legal ambiguities of the refugee regime to pursue strategic interests,Footnote 93 and utilise different legal strategies to evade legal obligations.Footnote 94 Integral to norm evasion is how states and other actors strategically use international law by creatively interpreting rules to legitimise their actions, while at the same time, interpreting it in a way to maximise their flexibility to pursue their interests.Footnote 95 These interpretive framing tactics give states what Aalberts and Gammeltoft-Hansen have called ‘sovereign manoeuvrability’Footnote 96 as international legal frameworks act as both a constraint on state conduct and a tool with which to pursue national interests.Footnote 97 International law provides a means to legitimate political actions as it provides an authoritative and apparently neutral tool in which to garner support from others.Footnote 98 This is why many states would try and justify their actions using the law rather than simply try and avoid it altogether, as doing the latter could undermine their reputation and create for themselves a pariah status within international society.Footnote 99
However, what has not been adequately examined when states use norm evasion in the migration policy space is how the strategic use of evasive tactics are shaped by, and shaped to fit, the broader migration deterrence policy framework. The contestation of norms and laws are shaped by context, and actors will localise them to fit within local cultural settings.Footnote 100 In this case, the EU’s interpretation of the international solidarity principle was shaped by, and was shaped to fit, the institutional dynamics of its broader migration externalisation policy framework. Norm evasions do not happen in a vacuum. The EU and Member States wanted to advance externalisation and evading human rights obligations under the solidarity principle allowed their interpretation of the principle to fit in with, and complement, their deterrence framework. In doing so, the broader externalisation framework helps inform state interests and places possibilities and limits on norm evasion strategies.
The reflexive relationship between the EU’s externalisation policy framework and the strategic interpretation of the international solidarity principle can be seen in the justifications and practices used when exercising solidarity with non-EU countries, such as the intertwining of security and humanitarian norms and values. Scholars have shown in Europe and elsewhere around the world that migration deterrence policies incorporate security practices of hardening borders and labelling migrants and asylum seekers as threats to state sovereignty and national security.Footnote 101 At the same time, states strategically adopt liberal humanitarian norms to promote deterrence measures as necessary to save lives and care for those that arrive at their borders. Referred to as ‘compassionate borderwork,’Footnote 102 the securitisation and humanitarianism of border policies are often intertwined, portraying migrants and refugees as both a risk to destination countries, and at the same time, at risk of being harmed.Footnote 103 The EU has incorporated both the security and humanitarian norms into its interpretation of the international solidarity principle. On the one hand, the EU and Member States exercise solidarity to deter irregular arrivals. On the other hand, the EU argues that solidarity with non-EU partners helps achieve its humanitarian obligations by providing financial and material assistance to host countries.
However, by shaping the international solidarity principle in a manner that is consistent with migration externalisation policies, the EU’s interpretation of the principle went beyond the boundaries of acceptable interpretations and undermined both its letter and spirit.Footnote 104 The EU argues that the bilateral migration agreements with neighbouring countries are an act of international solidarity with both host states and refugees. However, these agreements have undermined preventive solidarity by weakening human rights protections, including access to asylum, the non-refoulement principle, and economic and social rights under the Refugee Convention. Reactive solidarity has also been undermined through inequitable responsibility sharing arrangements that harm human rights. The Refugee Convention is integral to helping maintain the balance between state sovereignty and humanitarian obligations in international society by encouraging states to act in loco civitatis, that is, provide sanctuary for refugees.Footnote 105 However, the EU’s bilateral agreements swing the balance between sovereignty and humanitarian obligations in favour of sovereign interests, creating unequal and unjust partnerships that harm asylum seekers and refugees.
The violation of preventive and reactive solidarity is accompanied by undermining the spirit of the international solidarity principle as well. The Draft Declaration sheds light on why state and non-state actors have obligations to exercise international solidarity with others, including with asylum seekers and refugees. The UN Independent Expert argues that the normative foundation for the international solidarity principle is based on existing laws,Footnote 106 including human rights and refugee norms and laws. As Miller has argued, the international human rights framework provides the basis for responsibilities to asylum seekers and refugees as the commitment to human rights provides a shared responsibility to protect them.Footnote 107 Protecting, realising and enforcing human rights for those inside as well as outside the state helps to challenge inside/outside distinctions by focusing on obligations to all human beings to ensure, as Perry argues, that ‘certain things ought not to be done to any human being and certain other things ought to be done for every human being.’Footnote 108 The obligations to exercise international solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees comes from the commitment to upholding and realising human rights.
The second reason which the Draft Declaration identifies as to why actors have obligations to exercise international solidarity with others revolves around the responsibilities that are generated from living in an interdependent world where actions by one actor can impact distant strangers.Footnote 109 That is, states and other actors have obligations to one another by virtue of living in international society.Footnote 110 These obligations can be moral, political, or legal.Footnote 111 That obligations can spring from the mere fact of living with others has parallels with Kant’s argument that our joint existence on a spherical earth means that we need to learn how to get along with one another.Footnote 112 Our confinement to the earth, our interdependence on it, and our right to a place on the planet, triggers moral obligations to others.Footnote 113 International solidarity provides a practice that can guide responsibility sharing and international cooperation regarding asylum seekers and refugees on a spherical earth in a just and equitable manner. If states and other actors evade their obligations in order to pursue their own interests, they undermine the international solidarity principle.
Are there alternative interpretations of the EU’s behaviour that do not see its interpretation of the solidarity principle as an abuse? One alternative explanation is that the EU is taking a pragmatic position in compromising on both its border control goals and its humanitarian obligations to migrants and refugees. However, the problem with this explanation is that there is a way states can abide by both human rights and humanitarian obligations as well as control sovereign borders without violating international law. The UN has devised guidelines on how to do this, however, this has not been implemented.Footnote 114 Moreover, the current EU measures are not an example of balancing border policies with human rights and humanitarian obligations because, as the next section demonstrates, the EU and Member States have privileged border policies and undermined human rights protections, not balanced them.
A second alternative explanation is that the EU’s policy framework and structure has conflicting norms within it that are generating what has been called ‘organised hypocrisy.’ The hypocrisy arises when there is a conflict between different ideals within organisational structures that lead to hypocritical outcomes as actors try to fulfil each of the conflicting goals.Footnote 115 Organised hypocrisy is different from norm evasion, such as abuse, because organised hypocrisy is not an intentional act but reflects the structural limits, contradictions, and constraints of organisations and policy frameworks.Footnote 116 However, this explanation ignores how the EU and Member States have not been forced to adopt their current position based on the organised hypocrisy of policy structures but have actively and strategically interpreted norms and laws to try and evade obligations.
A stronger interpretation that better reflects both current and past EU behaviour in the migration and refugee policy space is that the EU strategically interpreted the international solidarity principle to fit in with its externalisation policies to achieve deterrence goals. There are international guidelines as well as serious human rights concerns that are being ignored, and fundamental elements of the international solidarity principle being violated. This does not reflect an attempt to balance border management with humanitarian obligations, but an attempt to reinterpret the principle to significantly weaken human rights safeguards to make it easier to pursue deterrence goals.
Before turning to how the EU has abused the solidarity principle, a distinction needs to be made between how the EU exercises solidarity within the EU and solidarity with external partners. The EU has its own responsibility sharing frameworks for asylumFootnote 117 that invoke the principle of solidarity to guide member state cooperation.Footnote 118 Its internal Pact creates a ‘solidarity mechanism’ which aims to ensure that responsibility sharing obligations are fair, and that all member states contribute to responsibility sharing in some way, rather than leaving it up to only a few member states.Footnote 119 However, the EU exercise of solidarity with external partners and with refugees in host countries is different. It lacks both a clear framework that determines how obligations are to be equitably shared and sufficient human rights safeguards to ensure equitable and fair responsibility sharing arrangements. The EU argues that it exercises solidarity with neighbouring countries through its bilateral deals. However, it interprets international solidarity in a way that advances border externalisation and undermines its key constitutive principles through a violation of preventive and reactive solidarity. This abuse not only undermines the solidarity principle but harms the EU’s reputation as well.
EU bilateral migration partnerships and international solidarity
The EU has interpreted the international solidarity principle, and its obligations to asylum seekers and refugees, within the policy context of preventing irregular migration. After 1985, when the EU adopted the Schengen Acquis, its internal borders relaxed and external borders hardened, establishing what is commonly called ‘fortress Europe.’ European states, along with other industrial democracies, such as the US, Canada, and Australia, and partner countries in South America, Africa, and Asia, have implemented non-entrée policies aimed at securitising migration policies and keeping out asylum seekers and refugees arriving irregularly.Footnote 120 These policies have included visa controls, deployment of Immigration Liaison Officers overseas, and sanctioning airline carriers if they do not check their passengers’ visa paperwork.Footnote 121 European countries have also erected physical barriers, such as walls and fences, passed laws that have removed refugee protections from parts of their territory,Footnote 122 and pushed back asylum seekers and refugees both within EuropeFootnote 123 and at sea.Footnote 124 In addition, EU countries have passed laws that criminalize assistance to irregular arrivals thereby deterring people from helping them. This has included prosecuting individuals and humanitarian organizations that have rescued migrant vessels at sea, providing food, information, and equipment to those travelling on land, as well as documenting and exposing human rights violations by governments.Footnote 125
The EU’s non-entrée polices extend back decades, but since the 2010s, it has developed cooperative partnerships with neighbouring countries that help it achieve its migration deterrence goals. However, it has done this by attempting to balance its securitised deterrence objectives with its international legal and humanitarian obligations. The EU’s immigration policies have linked deterrence of irregular arrivals with the humanitarian and human rights objectives of saving lives at sea and preventing exploitation of people by human traffickers and people smugglers.Footnote 126 Pursuing one, according to the EU, helps to achieve the other. This is an important element of the EU’s interpretation of the solidarity principle as it helps the EU to legitimise deterrence policies by arguing that they are needed to protect human rights and prevent drownings at sea.Footnote 127
The intertwining of humanitarian principles and migration deterrence objectives can be seen in the agreements with Türkiye and Libya. In a landmark agreement in November 2015, the EU and Türkiye developed a Plan of Action worth €6 billion to respond to over one million people that arrived in Europe that year, with around 800,000 arriving over the Aegean Sea to Greece.Footnote 128 The European Commission stated, ‘The international community faces an unprecedented crisis which requires solidarity, togetherness and efficiency.’Footnote 129 As part of the deal, all irregular migrants that arrived on Greek islands from Türkiye were to be turned back, and in exchange, the EU promised to take one Syrian refugee for every one turned back.Footnote 130 Two years later, the EU, Italy and Libya signed agreements to prevent boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.Footnote 131 Libya, a major departure country for migrants and refugees,Footnote 132 has been provided with financial and material resources, boats, and training and intelligence sharing for Libyan officials so Libya could intercept and pullback migrant vessels before reaching Europe. In addition, €700 million was provided through the Trust Fund for Africa between 2015 and 2022 to help Libya address political stability, economic development, border management, and human displacement.Footnote 133
The Türkiye and Libya agreements set the precedent for further engagement in the region based on the EU’s understanding of international solidarity. In July 2023, the Conference on Migration and Development marked the beginning of what Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni called the ‘Rome Process.’ This involved cooperation with neighbouring countries to address the ‘root causes’ of migration, save lives at sea, and stop irregular migration.Footnote 134 The first country to be signed under the process was Tunisia in July 2023, which by that time had more boats departing for Italy than Libya.Footnote 135 The MOU strengthened the existing cooperation between the EU and Tunisia on border managementFootnote 136 through providing €1 billion to address the ‘root causes’ of migration and cooperate on stopping people smuggling and human trafficking, border management, economic reform and trade, and people-to-people exchange programs.Footnote 137 According to the European Commission, the MOU aimed ‘to address their shared challenges in a spirit of solidarity, mutual respect and equal partnership,’Footnote 138 with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calling the MOU a ‘blueprint’ for future agreements.Footnote 139
The EU-Tunisia MOU not only marked the beginning of the ‘Rome Process,’ but it also led to a ‘Team Europe’ response to irregular migration. This comprised of the EU and member states working together to develop common approaches and agreements with external parties on migration.Footnote 140 By May 2024, three more agreements had been signed with Mauritania,Footnote 141 Egypt,Footnote 142 and Lebanon.Footnote 143 Each agreement was unique, but they all shared several features. They included addressing ‘root causes’ of migration, cooperation to prevent human trafficking and people smuggling, strengthening border management in partner countries, and developing legal pathways for migration. These agreements demonstrated the exercise of solidarity, according to the EU, because they help achieve obligations to support asylum seekers and refugees through financial and material support of neighbouring countries.
How, then, did these agreements constitute an abuse of the international solidarity principle? In all these arrangements, responsibility sharing obligations were not ignored. The EU acknowledged that it either had to take in refugees or provide financial support for hosting asylum seekers and refugees. However, a closer look shows that the EU’s approach breached the boundaries of acceptable interpretations by trying to decouple human rights protections and outcomes from the exercise of international solidarity. These cooperative arrangements enabled the EU and Member States to exercise greater ‘sovereign manoeuvrability’ to deter irregular arrivals and evade their legal and human rights obligations to asylum seekers and refugees. These agreements did not have sufficient human rights safeguards, exposed people to human rights violations, and generated inequitable responsibility sharing arrangements. The EU’s use of international solidarity has represented both an attempt to shape the content of the principle to better fit in with the EU’s migration deterrence goals, but also to utilise it to legitimise these deterrence policies. The result has been a violation of both preventive and reactive solidarity.
Violation of preventive solidarity
A key component of the international solidarity principle is preventive solidarity. This constitutive element refers to a country’s obligation to uphold and promote human rights and engage in ‘pre-emptive measures’ to avert crises and disasters.Footnote 144 It also involves ensuring there are human rights protections embedded in agreements. As the UN Independent Expert on Solidarity argues, ‘While every country is entitled to manage its borders as it sees fit, such sovereignty is clearly not absolute. The management and control of borders cannot be done in a way that imperils certain of the most basic human rights of refugees and other persons – such as their rights to life and dignity as human beings.’Footnote 145 The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees,Footnote 146 and the Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights at International Borders, outlines how border policies must be in accordance with human rights, and that cooperative border policies between countries must have human rights safeguards, including the ability to suspend arrangements if human rights are breached.Footnote 147
The EU inserted in the MOUs and agreements with other partner countries statements that the bilateral relationships would be conducted in accordance with human rights and international law.Footnote 148 However, these human rights statements did not go beyond words. Human rights groups were very critical of the arrangements as partner countries had poor human rights records and people returned there were exposed to brutal violence. Torture, beatings, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and killings of asylum seekers and refugees were documented in Türkiye,Footnote 149 Libya,Footnote 150 Tunisia,Footnote 151 Egypt,Footnote 152 and Lebanon.Footnote 153 In Libya, the situation became so bad that the UN found in 2023 that crimes against humanity were being carried out across the country.Footnote 154 Racism, discrimination, and xenophobia against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees at the highest levels of governmentFootnote 155 and in the mediaFootnote 156 were also documented in some partner countries.
In addition to brutal forms of violence, other rights protections under the Refugee Convention were also violated. Access to adequate housing, education, employment or healthcare for refugees was found to be wanting in partner countries.Footnote 157 Deportations and mass expulsions,Footnote 158 as well as boat pullbacks across the Mediterranean Sea,Footnote 159 were documented throughout partner countries. These practices not only put lives at riskFootnote 160 but denied access to asylum,Footnote 161 and violated the non-refoulement principleFootnote 162 and the right of people to leave their country.Footnote 163
However, despite the extensive reporting of human rights violations by human rights groups and journalists, the EU did not suspend agreements. Sufficient human rights safeguards, monitoring, or suspension mechanisms were not included within these bilateral agreements, something that was inconsistent with international obligations and the interpretations of them by human rights authorities. In fact, the EU’s attitude to human rights safeguards was one of dismissal when it faced criticism. It ignored the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner’s call for human rights safeguards to be embedded in the agreements.Footnote 164 It also dismissed concerns raised by the EU Parliament, which passed a resolution in 2023 about ‘the sharp deterioration of the human rights situation’ in Tunisia.Footnote 165 In September 2023, the European Ombudsman asked how the EU intended to uphold human rights in its agreement with Tunisia.Footnote 166 The European Commission responded in February 2024 that a human rights assessment was not needed for the MOU because of previous ongoing human rights programs with Tunisia.Footnote 167 This was despite the European Parliament noting that the human rights situation was deteriorating before the agreement was signed.Footnote 168
The EU’s disregard for human rights in partner countries has led to reputational costs as observers have criticised the EU for glossing over human rights violations. A MEP Mounir Satouri, unhappy with these arrangements, stated in 2024: ‘It seems that we are bankrolling dictators across the region. And that is not the Europe that we want to see. That is not the place which the EU should be holding in the world.’Footnote 169 There have also been accusations of complicity in human rights abuses. Under the principle of State Responsibility, states cannot contribute to the human rights violations of other countries through measures such as financial support.Footnote 170 The EU was accused of complicity in human rights violations as it funded Lebanon authorities that were involved in forced deportations to Syria.Footnote 171 When the EU was also accused of complicity in crimes against humanity in Libya in a 2023 UN report, the EU doubled down, claiming that its support was needed to improve the situation there.Footnote 172 At the time of writing in mid-2025, the EU continued to support the agreement with Libya with no signs that such intensive cooperation was going to cease.
Allegations of complicity, dismissal of human rights concerns, along with the failure to embed human rights safeguards into these agreements, generated strong criticism from human rights authorities and actors as inconsistent with the EU and Member States’ obligations in the exercise of international solidarity. These criticisms helped to both delegitimise the EU’s interpretation of the principle, and at the same time, undermine its credibility as a law-abiding international actor. The EU’s attempt at disconnecting the realisation of human rights from the international solidarity principle apparently failed to convince the rest of the world and was labelled a form of abuse. The Independent Expert explicitly addressed the externalisation of migration policies as being abusive of the solidarity principle. Criticizing the EU agreements with Türkiye and Libya, the Independent Expert stated that they represented ‘abusive deployments’ of the solidarity principle because they undermined refugee rights, contributed to human rights violations, and made migration pathways more dangerous.Footnote 173 Although the EU critics were unable to prevent the EU from proceeding with these agreements, they reaffirmed the connection between human rights and the international solidarity principle. Critics show how the EU’s perception of these problems went beyond the boundaries of appropriate interpretation, and thereby helped to delegitimise the EU’s attempts at the redefinition of the international solidarity principle.
Violation of reactive solidarity
Alongside undermining preventive solidarity, the EU’s exercise of international solidarity undermined reactive solidarity. Under the Draft Declaration, reactive solidarity involves working collectively to respond to global crises, ranging from climate change to terrorism and migration.Footnote 174 One of the objectives of the international solidarity principle in the Draft Declaration is to support ‘refugee and migrant-centred approaches’ in response to human displacement.Footnote 175
However, these agreements have led to further displacement as many partner countries have relied on deportations rather than developing equitable responsibility sharing relationships. For example, when Lebanon pushed back and deported people to Syria, Syrians moved to other places, such as Cyprus, where arrivals jumped from 78 between January and March 2023 to 2000 during the same months in 2024. Such movement of people was an issue that sparked the agreement with Lebanon in the first place.Footnote 176 This kicked the can down the road as it pressured people on the move to travel through other countries rather than being supported through responsibility sharing arrangements.
The bilateral agreements did not engage in adequate responsibility sharing because they were structured to help evade responsibility obligations rather than develop equitable sharing partnerships. In 2021, the UNHCR criticised externalised agreements for undermining the solidarity principle, claiming:
Measures designed, or effectively serving, to avoid responsibility or to shift, rather than share, burdens are contrary to the 1951 Refugee Convention and principles of international cooperation and solidarity. Such externalization measures are distinct from policies and practices aimed at sharing international protection responsibilities in the spirit of international cooperation and solidarity.Footnote 177
Reactive solidarity was also undermined because partner countries did not have sufficient support structures for asylum seeker and refugee needs, including inadequate access to work, housing, healthcare, or appropriate asylum protections.Footnote 178 This contributed to unjust global inequalities, something the international solidarity principle aims to prevent. As many high-income states have implemented migration deterrence policies in partnership with states in the Global South,Footnote 179 responsibility for asylum seekers and refugees has been placed upon those least able to accommodate them. As of this writing in mid-2025, about 71 percent of refugees were hosted by low- and middle-income countries and 69 percent were hosted in neighbouring countries.Footnote 180 The EU’s policies have exacerbated this inequality by relying on countries such as LebanonFootnote 181 and Türkiye,Footnote 182 which have hosted the most refugees per capita and the second most worldwide respectively, despite the lack of resources to do so.
Reactive solidarity is intended to develop effective and collaborative responses to human displacement. This includes upholding one’s international legal obligations and responsibilities towards the displaced. However, the EU has shifted hosting responsibilities to neighbouring countries that were not adequately equipped to shoulder them. Such evasive strategies have failed to respond adequately to human displacement and contributed to further unjust hierarchies in international society. As the Independent Expert on Solidarity has argued, this inequality undermines the solidarity principle by failing to equitably share hosting responsibilities.Footnote 183 The Independent Expert has identified a ‘human rights-based international solidarity gap in terms of the South/North division of responsibilities’Footnote 184 regarding responsibility sharing, arguing:
States in the global South tend to host nearly 90 per cent of the world’s refugees. This is unfair whether it is viewed in terms of the number of refugees that a State accepts relative to its population or in terms of the number of refugees accepted relative to the financial resources available to a State.Footnote 185
Rather than trying to evade responsibilities, the Independent Expert argues countries in the Global North, such as EU Member States, should support more refugees.Footnote 186
These political struggles over the appropriateness of the EU’s agreements and its consistency with the international solidarity principle is a battle for intersubjective meaning of the solidarity principle. The EU could not define or impose a definition upon others because it must come in a conversation with others.Footnote 187 Materially weaker actors have passed judgementFootnote 188 on the EU’s bilateral arrangements and shown that the EU has breached the limit of what is deemed an acceptable interpretation and use of the international solidarity principle. These agreements undermined the spirit of international solidarity as they neglected responsibilities to protect and realise the human rights of others based on a commitment to human rights. They also created unjust partnerships in an interdependent world. In doing so, the EU has failed to convince others, largely because it has not sufficiently engaged with international norms, rules, and laws that emphasise the need for human rights to be incorporated into the solidarity principle.
Conclusion
While the EU insists that its bilateral migration agreements are consistent with international law and its human rights obligations, this article has demonstrated that they undermine the international solidarity principle. The EU has sought to interpret the international solidarity principle in a manner that reflects its geopolitical interests and, in doing so, it has compromised the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees. This has prima facie amounted to an abuse of the international solidarity principle as the EU has tried to evade its obligations by de-coupling human rights protections from the solidarity principle. The EU’s bilateral agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, and Türkiye, among other states, enhance cooperation with these countries, but they undermine both preventive and reactive solidarity, which has subsequently led to significant human rights abuses and unjust responsibility sharing outcomes. By intertwining migration deterrence goals with the international solidarity principle, the EU has succeeded in securitising migration but at the same time undermined both the letter and spirit of the solidarity principle.
This article makes important contributions to better understanding how the international solidarity principle is practised in international society. First, it focuses attention away from how solidarity is practised within the EU to how it is exercised outside of the EU with non-EU partners. As states in the Global North are continuing to find ways to evade their refugee obligations by establishing external partnerships, understanding how international solidarity is being interpreted and used is crucial to protect refugee and human rights.
Second, this article has shown that human rights and international solidarity are heavily intertwined under international law. International solidarity is not simply cooperation with others. It is cooperation guided by human rights for the realisation of those rights. The letter and spirit of the international solidarity principle recognises that states and non-state actors have a responsibility to protect asylum seekers and refugees because of both a commitment to human rights and the obligations that arise from living in an interdependent world. Undermining the principle through legal evasion not only weakens our responsibility for others but it replaces mutual aid for the selfish needs of powerful actors.
And third, the article has demonstrated how the interpretation of the international solidarity principle has been shaped by, and for, the broader migration deterrence policy framework. This contributes to the work on norm evasion in the migration policy space to show how norm evasion tactics and strategies are shaped by policy contexts to complement and better pursue strategic goals and objectives. How the international solidarity principle is interpreted is done neither in a vacuum nor is it a free-for all. Institutional dynamics, policy objectives, and policy frameworks play a powerful role in how norms and laws are evaded and interpreted in international society.
Ultimately, the EU’s attempt to justify and legitimise border externalisation policies in the name of international solidarity represents a dangerous precedent. It threatens to turn the international solidarity principle into a plaything used by states and other actors to rationalize any type of cooperation, regardless of its consequences for human rights. This is particularly serious at a time when, as former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon argued, international society is facing a ‘crisis of solidarity’Footnote 189 as states have neglected their humanitarian obligations to refugees. However, the international solidarity principle is integral to responding to the global refugee crisis. Defining international solidarity that strengthens refugee protections not only protects vulnerable people on the move, but it also has the practical advantage of helping to address a major collective action problem in relation to human displacement worldwide.Footnote 190 For the UN Independent Expert on International Solidarity, this can include embedding refugee obligations into national legislation, ensuring that border policies conform to international human rights standards, resettling more asylum seekers and refugees, challenging unjust inequalities, and cooperating in a way that advances refugee protectionsFootnote 191 rather than undermining them.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Editors of Review of International Studies and several anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this article.
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