Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Executive Director Kenneth Roth on Tuesday expressed concern [letter] over the EU Joint Action Plan [text, PDF] with Turkey, urging EU leaders to reject proposed elements due their “disturbing disregard for international law covering the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants.” Roth’s letter comes after Nils Muiznieks [official profile], the Council of Europe [official website] commissioner for human rights, stated that “the automatic forced return” to Ankara of any migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece by “irregular means” in exchange for accepting that amount of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey “is illegal and will be ineffective” [NYT op-ed]. Roth identified three major concerns about the proposed elements and asked for all three to be rejected:

1) fast-track mass returns to Turkey, 2) the proposal to resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey for each irregularly arriving Syrian who is returned to Turkey; and 3) cooperation with Turkey on what appears to be the establishment of a “safe area” in Syria that would be used as a pretext to contain the flow of asylum seekers leaving that war-torn country.

Both officials support vast reform and increase in resettlement of asylum seekers but do not believe this is hitting the mark. According to Muiznieks, “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

Earlier this month [JURIST report], the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi [official profile], expressed concerns [text] for the proposed migrant exchange program [press release]. Grandi said in his speech before the European Parliament [official website], “I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law.” The High Commissioner spoke to the council shortly after it had met with the Prime Minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu [BBC profile] to discuss the final steps of the exchange program. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] also demonstrated concern [press release] over the deal, calling it “an alarmingly short-sighted and inhumane attitude to handling this crisis.”