On 16 November 2017, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks, gave a speech at the Plenary Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, in which he shared his reflections on the broader human rights context with which he has been confronted over the last five-and-a-half years, including migration. He stressed that migration is an issue that has inspired strong emotions, decisively shaped electoral outcomes, and been hugely corrosive of European trust and cooperation. He also noted that the significant number of new arrivals in 2015-2016 prompted many countries to adopt restrictive “emergency” or “temporary” measures granting temporary forms of status and restricting family reunification rights. These “temporary” measures not only hinder integration and thus, will further fuel the rise of the far-right, which will claim that migrants “cannot or “do not want to integrate”. The Commissioner underlined that what we need are safe and legal venues for people in need of international protection to come to Europe, and the two core means in this regard are resettlement and family reunification.  

In his 2017 third quarterly report, the Commissioner gave his observations on the recent migration crisis, noting that while the numbers of migrants reaching Europe were down, the temperature of political discourse surrounding migration remained quite high in many quarters. He cited several countries where the migration issue and often, its conflation with fears of or prejudices against Muslims, served as a mobilizing cause, especially for  the far right. The Commissioner laid an emphasis on the importance of successful integration of migrants in host societies. He also drew attention to a worrying phenomenon of the newly negative attitude towards humanitarian work with migrants, noting the stigmatization or even criminalization of the work of migration NGOs. The Commissioner stressed that by doing this governments will only make their own task of coping effectively with migratory flows and migrant integration more difficult. Reminding of his critical stance on the EU-Turkey statement on migration, the Commissioner stressed that we should not ignore the grave violations of migrants’ human rights taking place in Libya and that the EU-Turkey statement should not be replicated. Lastly, drawing attention to some pending human rights issues of concern in Greece,  including lengthy detention of unaccompanied migrant children and police violence towards migrants, the Commissioner noted that there is a need for rapid measures to help the more than 13,000 migrants remaining on the islands.

On 21 November 2017, the Commissioner took part in and gave a keynote speech at the Conference on the principle of family unity for refugees in Switzerland, highlighting his recommendations concerning family reunification contained in the Issue Paper “Realising the right to family reunification of refugees in Europe”.