The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said Europe should continue to allow victims of persecution onto its territory after a cargo ship packed Kurdish refugees beached in southern France on Saturday.
"The UNHCR recognizes the need for states to intensify their cooperation efforts to identify and dismantle (illegal immigration) networks," the UNHCR's delegation in France said in a statement on Sunday.
"But it insists that the states should not reduce their immigration policy to repression, in which no distinction is made between economic migrants and refugees," the statement added.
The delegation is being kept updated on the Kurds’ caseand has been promised that each case would be individually examined.
"We will make sure that each asylum seeker is interviewed and that all those who require the protection conferred by the refugee status, because they feel under threat in their countries, get it," said delegation head Philippe Lavanchy.
Two UNHCR lawyers are due to visit the holding centre where the passengers of the cargo ship are staying on Monday.
"In the era of European harmonization, the UNHCR is convinced that France will be able to deal with the exceptional situation it faces in Frejus in a fair and swift way, in the spirit of the Geneva Convention of 1951," the statement concluded.
AFP