Permissible People Smuggling and the Duty of Rescue: Insights from Backstreet Abortion

Migrant smugglers are portrayed as pure evil, driven only by greed, as they are blamed for the death and suffering of thousands of migrants. Similarly, backstreet abortionists have been the object of universal condemnation. Yet they are the only hope and means for refugees and women when border crossing and voluntary interruptions of pregnancy are not legally available. Drawing on the analogy with backstreet abortion, in the first part of this article I argue that migrant smuggling is justified in the context of a systemic violation of the human right to seek refuge (e.g. criminalisation of border crossing and SAR operations), provided that a number of procedural constraints are met. In the second part of this article, I go one step further and argue that under the extremely non ideal conditions outlined above, smuggling becomes a humanitarian, and therefore cost-related, duty which binds organisations, whereas it only indirectly applies to individuals.