Update 25 January 2022 – Polish authorities have officially begun construction work on the wall on the border with Belarus, with the aim of blocking migrants from entering the country.

Update 3pm – According to the New York Times, the makeshift refugee camps in which thousands of migrants had been sheltering on the border between Poland and Belarus are reported to have been cleared. Women, men and children are said to have taken refuge in a nearby warehouse.

The crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus could be "resolved" in the worst possible way. The Warsaw government has announced its intention to build a wall to prevent migrants from crossing the border and thus entering the country (and, by extension, the European Union). "This is an absolutely strategic and priority investment for the security of the nation and its citizens," said Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski.

The anti-migration wall between Poland and Belarus is expected to be completed within a few months

Construction has not yet begun, of course. But according to the Polish minister, work could get under way before the end of the year and be completed within the first half of 2022. The intention is to proceed at a rapid pace: 24 hours a day, with three teams working in continuous rotation. The total cost is 353 million euros.

The wall is ultimately expected to stretch 180 kilometres — just under half the total length of the border separating Poland and Belarus. It is not yet known, however, which section will actually be covered by the project, nor whether it will pass through the Białowieża primeval forest, which would also pose a problem for local ecosystems, biodiversity and the climate more broadly.

Doubts over compliance with the Geneva Convention

Warsaw's decision also appears to be a political stretch. Only a minority of the population, according to figures cited by the international press, actually supports the government's approach to border management — an approach that in effect seeks to turn the European Union into what critics of the closure towards migrants have repeatedly called "a fortress".

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A wall also raises serious doubts from the perspective of international law. The 1951 Geneva Convention stipulates that asylum seekers must be allowed both to submit their applications and to be received for the time needed to process them. A wall would, of course, amount to pure pushback, making it impossible to uphold this right.

That said, other walls already exist on the European Union's external borders: the one "defending" the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco; the 40-kilometre barrier separating Greece and Turkey; and a 175-kilometre fence between Hungary on one side and Serbia and Croatia on the other, built at the behest of ultra-conservative president Viktor Orbán (at a cost of 880 million euros).

700,000 euros from the European Union for the Red Cross and NGOs

Other countries have instead chosen not to erect barriers. The EU, in short, is divided internally. One need only look at the positions taken by European institutions in response to Poland's announcement: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for example, expressed her opposition, while European Council President Charles Michel appeared to support the initiative.

In the meantime, Brussels announced financial support for the Red Cross and NGOs operating on the border between Poland and Belarus, amounting to 700,000 euros. Belarus, meanwhile, said it had opened negotiations with European countries.