EU-IOM-UNHCR Relations and Human Rights of Migrants: Subcontract or Contestation?

This study analyzes the trilateral relations between the European Union (EU), International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regarding migration management. Why and how do the EU and other international organizations (IOs) interact? How have the relations evolved? And what are the consequences of their interactions? This study addresses these questions by combining process-tracing (George and Bennett 2005) and discourse analysis (Schmidt 2010), using the documents issued by the relevant IOs. By doing so, this study enhances the conceptual framework of studies on the relations between IOs, that is, inter-organizational relations (IOR). The mainstream approach of IOR explains IO-IO interactions by resource dependency (Biermann 2008; Biermann and Koops 2017). According to this approach, IOs are usually reluctant to cooperate with each other, but they do so when they are interdependent for some resources. In this line, the more specific literature on EU external governance finds the EU-IO relations as hierarchical. For example, Sandra Lavenex argues that the IOM and the UNHCR have been the ‘subcontractors’ of the EU because of their dependence on the EU and its member states for funding and support (Lavenex 2016). Relatedly, den Hertog (2017) shows that the EU also depends on the IOM for its expertise, thus they are interdependent. In any event, it is safe to say that the existing literature on EU-IO relations – at least in the field of migration management – has focused on resource dependency as the basic condition of the occurrence of inter-organizational interactions. However, this line of argument overlooks the possibility of ‘inter-organizational contestation’: even when an IO A depends on another IO B for some resources, this dependency does not exclude the possibility that A criticizes B for normative reasons, such as the violation of human rights. The concept of inter-organizational contestation is proposed by the author elsewhere (Daidouji 2019), but its scope, conditions, and mechanisms are yet to be fully revealed. Against this background, this study analyzes EU-IOM-UNHCR trilateral relations regarding migration management and its implications for human rights protection, about which little is known. The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ accelerated the cooperation between the EU and other IOs. For example, the EU has made a considerable amount of investments with the help of the IOM and the UNHCR under the framework of EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF for Africa). However, NGOs and media report that EUTF for Africa facilitated the strengthening of the border control regime of Libya, in which asylum-seekers suffer from the detrimental treatments in the detention centers (e.g. Amnesty International 2018; Human Rights Watch 2019). Notably, in recent years the IOM is deepening the cooperative relations with the UNHCR, thereby increasingly contesting the EU in the form of joint declarations and proposals on this issue. In other words, as this study concludes, human-rights-related concerns have drove the IOM and the UNHCR to contest the EU in spite of their dependence on the EU for resources.