Opaque and unaccountable: Frontex Operation Hera

Abstract:

Operation Hera is coordinated by the EU’s external border agency Frontex and aims to stop migration along the maritime route from West Africa to the Spanish Canary Islands. According to Frontex, the operation has been a success: the scale of unauthorised maritime crossings along this route was reduced from five-digit to three-digit numbers. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) focused on Operation Hera, seeking to increase transparency about border enforcement operations and to reduce the agency’s unaccountability for human rights violations. Concretely, ECCHR hosted a round table on potential litigation against Frontex for human rights violations in 2016, and submitted access to documents requests on Operation Hera to Frontex.