Glossary

Definition

The overarching framework of the European Union’s external migration policy based on genuine partnership with non-EU countries and addressing all aspects of migration and mobility issues in an integrated, comprehensive and balanced manner.

Synonyms GAMM, Global Approach to Migration, GAM

Narrower migration profile, migration routes initiative

Related Africa Caribbean Pacific Observatory on Migration, Africa-EU Migration, Mobility and Employment Partnership, Asia-Europe Meeting, Bali Process, Budapest Process, Cotonou Agreement, Dialogue on Mediterranean Transit Migration

Comments 1. The Global Approach to Migration (GAM) was first defined by the European Council in December 2005 (COM(2007) 247) and further developed in 2007 and 2008. It has constituted the framework for the cooperation of the EU with third countries in the area of migration and asylum. The Stockholm Programme adopted in 2009 also acknowledged the importance of consolidating, strengthening and implementing the GAM.
2. The approach comprises the whole migration agenda, including legal and irregular migration, combating trafficking in human beings and smuggling of migrants, strengthening protection for refugees, enhancing migrant rights and harnessing the positive links that exist between migration and development.
3. In 2011, the global approach was evaluated. As a result of this, the Commission highlighted the need for further strengthening the external migration policy and published in November 2011 the Communication on the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility, COM(2011) 743 final on a new impetus to the EU’s external migration policy. The renewed GAMM focuses on four main priorities: improving the organisation of legal migration and facilitated mobility, preventing and reducing irregular migration in an efficient, yet humane way, strengthening the synergies between migration and development, and strengthening international protection systems and the external dimension of asylum.

Source Communication on the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility, COM(2011) 743 final

Definition The UN multilateral treaty which is the key legal document defining who is a refugee and who is not, the rights of refugees and the legal obligations of States towards them.

Synonyms Convention of 28 July 1951 relating to the status of refugees and its New York Protocol of 31 January 1967, CRSR, Geneva Convention and Protocol, The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva Refugee Convention and Protocol, Refugee Convention

Related Convention refugee, international protection, refugee law, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Comments 1. The 1967 Protocol removed geographical and temporal restrictions from the Convention. The 1951 Convention consolidates previous international instruments relating to refugees and provides the most comprehensive codification of the rights of refugees at international level. In contrast to earlier international refugee instruments, which applied to specific groups of refugees, the 1951 endorses a single definition of the term 'refugee' in Art. 1.
2. The Convention is both a status and rights-based instrument and is underpinned by a number of fundamental principles, most notably non-discrimination, non-penalisation and non-refoulement.

Source Geneva Convention of 1951 and Protocol of 1967

Definition

An initiative of the UN Member States to address the migration and development interconnections in practical and action-orientated ways.

Synonyms GFMD

Related Cooperation Platform on Migration and Development, Cotonou Agreement, Dialogue on Mediterranean Transit Migration, Global Approach to Migration and Mobility, migration profile

Comments 1. The first session of the GFMD was held in 2007.
2. The GFMD is a voluntary, informal, non-binding and government-led process open to all States and Observers of the UN, to advance understanding and cooperation on the mutually reinforcing relationship between migration and development.
3. For more information, see the website of GFMD.

Source

Website of the Global Forum on Migration and Development

Definition

A practice by which all persons forming part of a large-scale influx are regarded as refugees on a prima facie basis, ensuring that protection and assistance needs are met without prior individual determination of refugee status.

Synonyms prima facie determination of refugee status

Related group persecution, prima facie refugee

Comments

Refugee status must normally be determined on an individual basis, but when large populations are displaced under circumstances that indicate that most members of the population could individually be considered refugees, and where the need to provide protection and assistance is urgent and / or where it may not be possible for practical reasons to carry out an individual determination of refugee status, each member of that population in question can be regarded prima facie (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) as a refugee. In other words, the presumption is that individual members of the population concerned would be considered as refugees in need of protection. For more information, see UNHCR: Refugee status determination 2005.

Source UNHCR Master Glossary of Terms

Definition

The socially constructed attributes, roles, activities, responsibilities and needs predominantly connected to being male or female in given societies or communities at a given time.

Synonyms gender identity

Comments 1. People fleeing human rights violations and persecution due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity may qualify for international protection. Directive 2011/95/EU (Recast Qualification Directive) refers in Art. 10 'Reasons for persecution' to gender related aspects, including gender identity, which shall be given due consideration for the purposes of determining membership of a particular social group or identifying a characteristic of such a group.
2. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) use the following definition of 'gender identity': '"Each person's deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body - which may involve, if chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means - and other expressions of gender, including of dress, speech and mannerism (see ICJ, Yogyakarta Principles - Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, ('Yogyakarta Principles'), March 2007 )

Source Derived by EMN from the list of Concepts and Definitions on the UN Woman website

Definition

A working group within the framework of G8 countries which tackles irregular migration and trafficking in human beings in the broader context of combating terrorism and transnational crime.

Synonyms G8 Lyon / Roma Migration Experts Sub-Group, Roma-Lyon Group

Comments 1. The G8 Roma-Lyon Group mainly focuses on strategies relating to public security in an effort to combat terrorism and transnational crime. It gathers experts who are all civil servants from the G8 members, mainly from justice, foreign affairs and law enforcement services and intelligence agencies. The Group consists of several sub-groups dealing with different aspects of transnational crime.
2. G8 countries are Canada, FR, DE, IT, Japan, Russia, UK and the United States of America, with the European Commission also attending meetings.

Source Website of the Group of Eight Roma-Lyon Group

Definition

A network established in order to facilitate practical cooperation in the field of asylum and migration between the Immigration Services of the different member countries.

Synonyms GDISC

Related European Asylum Support Office

Comments 1. The GDISC was initiated in 2004.
2. Member countries comprise the 28 EU Member States, the three EU candidate countries (Iceland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey), the potential EU candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina and two Schengen associated countries (NO and CH).
3. For more information, see the website of GDISC.

Source Derived by the EMN from the website of GDISC

Definition

An economic migrant recruited for a restricted time of settlement and employment.

Broader economic migrant

Comments

This term is no longer used in the EU context . It was more or less restricted to migration flows in the 1950s and 1960s.

Source Developed by EMN

Definition

A concept

Synonyms persecution

Related group determination of refugee status, act of persecution, actor of persecution, prima facie refugee

Comments 1. An assumption of group persecution requires a certain intensity of persecution to warrant the general assumption of the individual persecution of each group member, irrespective of whether an individual has indeed been the victim of such persecution. This requires a threat emanating from so large a number of violations of rights protected by asylum law that it goes beyond separate individual infringements or a large number of individual infringements, but rather constitutes acts of persecution in the specific territory aimed at the group as a whole which increase, are repeated and spread to such an extent that there is not only a possibility, but a direct imminent danger of becoming a victim oneself for any member of such a group.
2. With consideration to the general principle of subsidiarity in refugee law, group persecution will only entitle a refugee to protection abroad, if the danger is present in the entire territory of the country of origin, i.e. if there is no internal alternative for protection. For the purposes of the danger of persecution after return, such an internal flight alternative must be reasonable and accessible from the country of refuge.
3. For more information on group persecution, see the European Database of Asylum Law (EDAL) , i.e. German Federal Administrative Court, ruling of 12 April 2009 – 10 C 11.08.

Source Definition according to the consistent practice of the German Federal Administrative Court based on ruling of 15 May 1990 – 9 C 17.89

Definition

An act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Related ethnic cleansing, crime against humanity

Comments 1. As outlined in the Convention, these acts include:
(a) killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
2. The definition is also outlined in Art. 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Source Art. 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948