A/HCR/41/44 reside in a country of the European Union).41 The Directive does not define “humanitarian assistance.” Unfortunately, as has already been noted, to date only a few member States of the European Union have enacted such a humanitarian exemption in their domestic laws. 42 22. The second relevant regional-level piece of legislation in Europe is European Council Framework Decision No. 2002/946/JHA of 28 November 2002, on the strengthening of the penal framework to prevent the facilitation of unauthorized entry, transit and residence. The Decision supplements Directive 2002/90/EC and requires member States to provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties for violations of the Directive. Such measures are to include the confiscation of the means of transport used to commit the offence and the prohibition of the direct or indirect practice of the occupational activity in the exercise of which the offence was committed, or deportation. Those laws are supplemented by a host of similarly oriented but non-binding policy documents, including the European Council conclusions on migrant smuggling of March 2016 and the European Union action plan on migrant smuggling (2015–2020), in both of which measures were proposed that have had the effect of suppressing humanitarian assistance to irregular migrants. The practices of certain European Union agencies, such as the European Border and Coastguard Agency (also known as Frontex), have sometimes had a similar effect. One such practice is the making of unsubstantiated but damaging accusations of collusion with or providing aid and comfort to traffickers and smugglers against many of the humanitarian NGOs and agents who work to assist irregular migrants. 43 23. In the Asia-Pacific region, at least two regional-level policy documents appear to have contributed significantly to the suppression and criminalization of those who come to the aid of irregular migrants, including those who do so for humanitarian reasons. Those instruments have been implemented in many States in the region.44Bangkok Declaration on Irregular Migration of 1999 encourages participating States in the Asia-Pacific region to criminalize both irregular migration and human smuggling, and to sanction the latter, whether it was undertaken for financial gain, or not. 45 In 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations adopted the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on Irregular Movement of Persons in Southeast Asia, which also supports the trend towards the criminalization of human smuggling, but does not make any clear distinction between smuggling for financial gain and the rendering of humanitarian assistance to irregular migrants to enter or remain in a given country. 24. In Africa, there are no regional-level laws, policies and practices that explicitly focus on suppressing or criminalizing those who render humanitarian aid to irregular migrants or refugees. The challenges of human trafficking and smuggling in the Horn of Africa have been part of the African Union agenda and led to the 2014 Khartoum Declaration on AU-Horn of Africa Initiative on Human Trafficking and Smuggling of Migrants. The initiative seeks to understand the issue of human smuggling in detail and to make a concerted effort to combat it. No regional practice on human trafficking and smuggling has developed from that initiative. 41 42 43 44 45 8 See Sergio Carrera and others, Fit for Purpose? The Facilitation Directive and the Criminalization of Humanitarian Assistance to Irregular Migrants (European Parliament Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs, 2016), pp. 26–27. See Rachel Landry, “The ‘humanitarian smuggling’ of refugees: criminal offence or moral obligation?” (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, working paper No. 119, October 2016), p. 10. See Stephanie Kirchgaessner, “EU migration crisis: border agency accused of stirring controversy” (The Guardian, April 2017); Italian Insider newsdesk, “Frontex accuses NGOs of providing smuggler ‘taxi’ service” (April 2017);and Nando Sigona, “NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean” (The Conversation, March 2017).. See A. Schloenhardt, “Trafficking in migrants in the Asia-Pacific: national, regional and international responses”. See in particular operative paras. 8 and 14.