The curse of the Andaman Sea Crisis: Policy implications for Africa on Mixed Migration Flows

This paper evaluates the collective failure of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) in protecting the victims of the Andaman Sea crisis in May 2015. It draws parallels between the ASEAN region’s efforts to contain mixed migrant flows and that of the African Union in Libya and Eritrea. Little attention has been given to the policy implications for the African Union (AU) after the aftermath of the Andaman Sea crisis in 2015. As a result, the key question for determination in this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it needs to be determined, through literature review, if Malaysia’s policy of border securitization dithered with the principle of non-refoulment by making the Andaman Sea victims pawns at the hands of smugglers and traffickers. The second line of inquiry draws policy prescriptions for the African Union by evaluating how the European Union has implemented border management projects in an effort to contain migrants transiting to Europe through Libya.