[yt_dropcap type=”square” font=”” size=”14″ color=”#000″ background=”#fff” ] T [/yt_dropcap]he history of European internationalism and European integration elucidate the idea of human rights and their ethical foundations in the post-World-War-II scenario. The Christian idea of contemporary European identity is grounded on the revolutionizing undertakings of technocrats like Jean Monnet whereas conservatives like Winston Churchill justified their idea of human rights protection in an archaic approbation of European civilization.
Therefore, the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) takes into account all high lines of rights advocacy to pursue an agenda at home and abroad wedded with accommodating and assimilating people of all hue and cries. It was established in the recent elections in the Netherlands and France that all Europeans populations do not hanker for old-fashioned or far-right nationalism that encapsulates narcissism and nihilism. In fact, these elections have confirmed the idea that politics of polarization on religious revanchism, political paranoid, and xenophobia is a dangerous premise that has boomeranged at the hustings in the both countries. It has also proved that the mass influx of refugees cannot be scapegoated and immigrants are not a political plank anymore as they had been presented in the US elections. The French voters with 66.1 percent have elected Mr. Macron, a candidate who is an advocate of liberal internationalism, multiculturalism, and pluralism.
The dehumanization and demonization of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants have nose-dived the political discourse radically to the far right and conventional politicians plummeted to abhorrent constituencies. This radicalism attained legitimacy and fossilized in the political discourse and started changing the public opinion. Consequently, this kind of policies turned out to be suicidal particularly for the mainstream political parties as they have evaded the other issues of public importance. On the other hand, if far-right political parties have performed well, it got nothing to do with migration or refugees as there were many other factors for their vertical rise as was the case in the Brexit referendum. Today, there is credibility crisis of the political legitimacy of the political leadership in Europe that has miserably failed to address the impact of economic crisis and not able to deal with fragmented political systems. Thus, the civil society institutions such as Aditus, Amnesty International, Doctors of the World and Human Rights Watch warned that human rights abuses like human trafficking, smuggling would not minimize by shifting the responsibility for refugee migration to the countries of origin.
But, unfortunately, the Europeans have been confronting clear and present challenges in the wake of the emergence of Syrian refugee crisis in March 2011. Firstly, at EU and national levels, the politicians have become privy to prejudices and phobia of a vociferous section of people that got disproportionately and inexplicably swayed by the politics of radical political parties like Front National led by Le Pen and Wilder’s Freedom Party. These political outfits tried hard to hijack the liberal political space by targeting refugees and migrants in a fashion that was incompatible with European values. Secondly, a section of European population stumbled across an arpeggio in their naïve narrative of assailing the strangers who are destined to queer the pitch for employment and human security in Europe. Thirdly, there are few European governments like Hungary and Poland who have adopted jingoist nationalism and transported it into the EU decision-making and municipal jurisdictions. The immigration policies of these governments have pilloried the refugees that pandered to compromising of human rights norms, imperatives of the rule of law, and democratic governance and further civil society and its institutions were also suppressed.
The rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants have emerged as the humongous challenges that could prompt the perennial deconstruction of universal human rights. The existing contours of international human rights norms and their enforcement are needed more than ever. The ECHR is an integral part of a European vision of human rights protection of all including refugees and migrants. The consequences of targeting the strangers for unemployment and economic insecurity are counter-narratives impregnated with lurking dangers of European disintegration and destabilization. Such a miasma of far-right politics and its political proponents must be resisted by electing politicians who hold views consistent with European ideas of equality with diversity emanating from the real narrative of ECHR that is rights-based Europe.