EU countries should take in more Afghans in need, announces migration Commissioner

04:23

Migration from Afghanistan is likely to increase under Taliban rule, the European Union said on Wednesday, calling on member states to ramp up admission quotas for Afghans in need of protection, particularly for women and girls.   "The instability in Afghanistan is likely to lead to increased migratory pressure," Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is responsible for migration and asylum in the EU's executive Commission, said in a statement. Dr. Alessandro Monsutti, Professor of Anthropology & Sociology, at the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies joins France 24 to discuss resettlement plans for Afghan refugees who've had to flee the Taliban. But if we look at Afghan migration from an historical perspective, Dr. Monsutti explains, "Afghans have tried to migrate and to be more mobile for the last 40 years and very often exploring migration routes they had already explored at a lower scale in the past. So migration became a normal feature of Afghan society in these last decades." So what's changed today? Dr. Monsutti describes a shift: "Probably now the difference is the attitude of western countries which so far have denied Afghans most of the entries, especially to Europe. Afghans were treated with less leniency than other migrants coming from Syria for instance. So, it's difficult to understand what would be the scale of this mobility and migration now." Dr. Alessandro Monsutti is also a Faculty Associate at the Centre of Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, a Faculty Associate at the Global Migration Centre, and a Faculty Associate at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy.