The EU’s lip service to the plight of refugees

EU leaders who convened in Malta on Friday to address the flow of migrants across the central Mediterranean, by and large, paid mere lip service to the awful plight of African migrants trapped in limbo in what is currently a lawless Libya.

And in so doing, what they mainly accomplished was to further fortify what has become known in recent years as Fortress Europe. That is because the main result of the leaders’ discussions, held between visits to tourist sites, boat trips and the taking in of local culinary delicacies, was to approve the ways and means of stopping the flow of migrants out of Libya and into Europe.

The human rights situation in Libya is truly catastrophic, with migrants heading for Europe bearing the brunt of the abuse. Migrants in Libya are, according to reports – one by Germany’s own foreign ministry published just this week – facing torture, slave labour, rape and execution at detention camps in Libya on a daily basis.

A damning December 2016 report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN mission in Libya documented widespread malnutrition, forced labour, illness, beatings, sexual abuse, torture, and many other horrific abuses at immigration detention centres in Libya.

But out of the 1,158-word Malta Declaration that resulted from Friday’s summit, a mere 18 words were dedicated to the inhumane and torturous plight of migrants seeking entry into Europe from Libya. Those words were: [the EU will be] “seeking to ensure adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants, together with the UNHCR and IOM”.

Far, far more was said about providing the ways and means for the Libyan authorities to be better equipped to stop the migrants from departing from Libyan shores, such as providing “training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coast guard and other relevant agencies” to stem the migrant flow. Such programmes, according to the Malta Declaration, must be “rapidly stepped up, both in intensity and numbers”.

The Declaration also states that the EU will “further efforts to disrupt the business model of smugglers through enhanced operational action, within an integrated approach involving Libya and other countries on the route and relevant international partners, engaged Member States… Europol and the European Border and Coast Guard.”

Such measures, of course, come under the guise of preventing deaths at sea which is obviously a worthy cause, but there is little doubt among many human rights organisations that the goal here is simply to stop the flow into Europe.

Bang on cue, the Libyan coastguard in a relatively rare statement announced yesterday that it had apprehended 400 Europe-bound migrants and brought them back to Libyan shores, where they will undoubtedly continue to suffer horrendous abuse.

This was a shameful dereliction of the EU’s humanitarian duty to protect human beings, whether they are EU citizens or not. Blocking people in Libya makes a mockery of the EU’s values of human dignity, rights and the rule of law.

With its Malta Declaration, the EU will not be doing all the dirty work itself, it will not perhaps engage in pushbacks of migrants attempting to leave Libya. Instead, it will provide the training, equipment and support for the Libyan authorities to do the dirty work for it – to stop migrants from fleeing the horrors they face in Libya, or to catch them before they leave Libyan waters.

The EU has balked from its humanitarian responsibility. While any action directed at saving lives is to be commended, by sealing the deal with Libya through which migrants trying to flee human rights violations are being pushed back to those same conditions – the principle of non-refoulement will have been violated.

The EU seems to have accepted and legitimised the human suffering prevailing in Libya by accepting the pushing back of people to conditions where they suffer documented arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, unlawful killings, trafficking and enforced disappearance, labour exploitation and sexual violence.

The EU needs to place far more emphasis on ensuring safe reception capacities and conditions in Libya if the EU is, as it aims, to stop people from leaving the country for Europe in the first place. It is hoped, for the sake of those people trapped in Libya and for the EU’s own humanitarian credentials, that this will indeed be the case.