War, social conflicts, climate catastrophes has forced about 21.3 million people from their home. Over half of these refugees are under the age of 18 (The UN Refugee Agency 2016). The majority of refugees to the European Union arrived via the Mediterranean and about 4600 adults and children, died or are gone missing on their journey to Italy by boat in 2016 (Open Society Foundation, 2016).

This wage of refugees and migrants creates a new situation for EU-member states, which seldom are defined as immigrant countries (Kumin, 2015). As a political reaction to this unexpected refugee wage, several European countries closed their border or introduced more restrictive migration and asylum legislation in the beginning of 2016. Furthermore, the EU commission made controversial deals with third countries as Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Nigeria in order to stop refugees and migrants to come in EU. These transnational deals risk refugees’ rights to asylum, and human treatment (Open Society Foundation 2016).

One of the countries severely affected by war conflicts, violence and civil population displacements is Afghanistan (Amnesty International 2016). In the third quarter of 2016 about 62100 Afghans sought asylum in EU for the first time. This group is the second largest group seeking asylum in EU-countries, after the Syrians (EUROSTAT 2016).

In October 2016 the EU-commission made a principle agreement with Afghanistan that obliges this country to receive returning Afghan refugees. This agreement makes it possible for EU-countries to make bilateral agreements with Afghanistan in order to facilitate massive deportations of Afghan refugees from EU. These deportations can be executed by force, even if the Afghans refugees have already applied for asylum in EU (Swedish Television 2016-10-06; Swedish Radio 2016-10-03). 

Following the EU-restrictive migration policy, Sweden decided to close its boarders temporally in the beginning of 2016.  Furthermore, in July 2016 the Swedish Parliament introduced juridical restriction to asylum seekers' possibilities of being granted residence permits and being reunited with their families (Svenska Riksdagen 2016; Open Society foundation 2016). I October 2016 Sweden made also an agreement with Afghanistan to send back about hundred Afghan children and young to this Asian country.  

Even if some groups in the Swedish society have welcome more restrictive migration policies, other groups have been very critical.  One of these critical groups is a group of 300 Swedish teachers who published a debate article to the Liberal newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in October 2016 to protest against the massive deportation of children to Afghanistan.  By arguing that this massive deportation risks refugee children’s rights to education according to the Convention of the Right of the Child (CRC) and the Swedish national legislation, these teachers ask the Swedish Government to stop it (Svenska Dagbladet 2016-10-17)  

The fact that these new migration policies risk the implementation of the CRC (Zetterqvist Nelsson K. Hagström 2016) make it interesting to analyse how EU-states members relate to this convention in times of restrictive migration policies in EU-countries. In the light of this, the purpose of this paper is to analyse implications of the transnational agreement about massive deportation of Afghan Children from EU-countries to Afghanistan focusing on the right to education according to CRC and the Swedish national school legislation.  

In order to analyse the documents, Hanna Arendt (1973, 2006) understanding of individual responsibility in times of war and social conflicts will be used as theoretical starting point to discuss the implications of these restrictive migration policy for the Afghan children’s right to education. Arendt’s analysis will also be used to reflect on individual responsibility of civil servants and public officials in formal and informal education contexts in the EU-states members.

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