Following the closure of the Western Balkan route, the European Union focused on new refugee flows that mostly went through the Mediterranean. At the European Union leaders’ summit in Malta in early February 2017, it was agreed to provide Libya with assistance in the amount of 200 million euros in order to combat the smuggling of refugees from Africa to Europe. It is envisaged that these funds be used to build allegedly safe refugee centers in Libya and to organize their return to countries of origin as well as to train and equip the Libyan Coast Guard.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, strongly criticized the agreement between the European Union and Libya on preventing migration. The High Commissioner expressed disagreement over the sharp increase in the number of people detained in the terrible conditions in Libya and announced that the EU policy to provide assistance to Libya’s coastguard in intercepting and returning migrants has proven to be inhumane.
He further states that suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the conscience of humanity. What has already been a serious situation has now become a catastrophic one. The High Commissioner called for urgent decriminalization of irregular migration to protect the human rights of people currently living in the terrible conditions of Libyan imprisonment.
According to Libya’s Department of Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM) 19,900 people were being held in facilities under its control in early November, up from about 7,000 in mid-September when authorities detained thousands of migrants following armed clashes in Sabratha, a smuggling and trafficking hub, about 80 kilometres west of Tripoli.
The European Union and Italy are providing support to Libya’s coastguard for intercepting boats at sea, including in international waters, and despite concern expressed by human rights organizations that such practices exposes more and more people to arbitrarz detention, torture, rape, forced labor, exploitation and extortion. Those in custody do not have the opportunity to complain against detention nor have access to legal assistance.
The High Commissioner stressed that the European Union and its member states did not do anything to reduce the level of abuse that migrants suffer and that, according to the data available to the situation, the situation is worsening. The mission that visited Libya at the beginning of November has caught thousands of men and women traumatized, lying one over the other, locked in hangars without access to basic human needs. Many of them have already been exposed to trafficking, kidnappings, torture, forced labor, physical violence, starvation and other atrocities while traveling through Libya. In the detention centers, daily abuse with the batons with electric shock were reported. Women interviewed by UN mission officials reported that guards often raped them.
The High Commissioner urged the Libyan authorities to take concrete steps to eradicate human rights violations in the centers under their control and to punish those suspected of having committed torture and other inhumane treatment. Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein has concluded that modern slavery, rape and murder must not be allowed in the name of migration management.