I am a scholar with a focus on the development of international law and legal institutions in the practice of transitional justice. My view is that the focus on smugglers, or even the action and inaction of the Greek coast guard, distracts from the real cause of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean: the deliberate policies set in place by European states and supported by the European Union. Diminishing legal protections for migrantsIn the wake of the massive population flows accompanying the second world war, European states enacted the 1951 Refugee Convention. But European states are renouncing key elements of this rule of law structure via the illegality of their policies towards migrants. Kerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, Roskilde UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
