The EU starts to put its money where its mouth is
EU leaders who convened in Malta last February to address the problem of flow of migrants across the central Mediterranean into Europe were, by and large, seen to have paid only mere lip service to the awful plight of African migrants trapped in limbo in what is currently a practically lawless Libya. They were blasted by several NGOs at the time as having merely reinforced the concept of Fortress Europe, with their hawkish talk about better equipping the Libyan coast guard to rope migrants in, while ignoring the abysmal plight of refugees stuck in the country.
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 several reports facing torture, slave labour, rape, sexual abuse and execution at detention camps in Libya on a daily basis. And while the European Commission yesterday confirmed that it is indeed working to provide training and capacity building to the coast guard to save lives in the Mediterranean, which will be read as helping the Libyan authorities to prevent migrants from heading for the EU, it also began to put its money where its mouth is by providing concrete funding for helping the
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third country nationals stuck in awful conditions in the war-torn country. The European Commission yesterday approved €90 million for protecting and assisting migrants in Libya, which will be implemented by five well-respected partners: International Organisation for Migration, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the German Corporation for International Cooperation.
These organisations were chosen for their ability to enact swift operational deployment, desperately needed as the main season for human migration, which will inevitably see more and more sub-Saharan migrants becoming bottlenecked in Libya, is about to begin. The programme will address various aspects of the migration challenge in Libya and along the Central Mediterranean route in terms of stepping up the protection of migrants and refugees, including the most vulnerable, in Libya.
€48 million will go to providing assistance and protection fort migrants and refugees in detention centres and in urban areas. This will include direly needed primary health care, psychological first aid, identification of vulnerable persons, access to food and other non-food items. It will also go toward the creation of ‘Safe Spaces’ as alternatives to detention such as the establishment of shelters providing 24/7 care and specialised services.
The remaining €42 million will go toward improving the capacities of Libyan authorities to provide services and foster local development and stability, through the provision of and access to quality services for migrants - including health facilities and education and rehabilitation of local infrastructures. The funds, approved by the EU Trust Fund for Africa after a proposal from the European Commission, are expected to go a long way toward addressing the horrific plight of migrants in Libya. It should also allay the fears of many NGOs that last February’s Malta Declaration was about more than merely stemming the flow of migrants reaching EU shores from North Africa.
It will, however, require more than a single injection of funds, but, at the very least, yesterday’s announcement showed there is the political will to address the plight of refugees in Libya, and that it is not only about stemming their flow into Europe.