by Nick O’Connell
EU Political Analysis

1 February 2020

Back in November of 2019, MotM joined other international human rights organizations in pressuring the Italian government to back away from extending the ongoing agreements with the Libyan government that fund and support the country’s Coast Guard and detention centers.

The government did not intervene, however, and on 3 November the agreement was automatically renewed. At the time, the Italian Ministry of the Interior reassured human rights organizations like MotM that they would initiate talks with their Libyan counterpart to amend the agreement and address the points that threaten migrants’ human rights.

Yet, these talks never even began. Because according to the Italian Minister of the Interior, the Libyan counterpart refused to participate. And on Sunday 2 February the accords will be formally extended for another three years.

At Migrants of the Mediterranean, we are thinking of the human toll of this decision.

Italy and the European Union will continue to economically support the Libyan Coast Guard and the country’s detention camps, structures built to contain migrants saved at sea by this puppet Coast Guard, but that in reality are not a place of safety, but danger.

The detention centers are notorious. They do not conform to any human rights convention. Migrants are imprisoned for years, often tortured, sold as slaves, exploited, and left to die––alone, and in a country in which they never aimed to settle.
These agreements fail to help people in their home states, since most are not from Libya, and they have physically blocked migrants in a volatile country, where they are treated like slaves and are under constant threat of physical danger.

These accords have failed, but few in Italy and Europe are speaking against it.

Libya is not a safe harbor and the European Union must not rely on Libya’s government to detain thousands of people merely to avoid European landing and reception.

What is the human cost of furthering this agreement?

Ask Sami, who was in detention at Al-Khums for more than 1 year.

Ask Richard, who was tortured daily for months in Libyan detention.

Ask Fabulous, who spent 4 months at a detention camp in Sabratha.

Like thousands of other people, Sami, Richard, Fabulous––and many more MotM actively tracks––have been held in long-term, arbitrary detention within a country that never ratified the 1951 Convention on Refugees and is in the midst of a decade-long civil war with no end in sight.

While the chances of the accords being reversed anytime before Sunday are slim, we at MotM will be on the front line, calling out political shortcomings of the likes that endanger those on the margins, and always in our clear course to elevate the migration discourse squarely in human terms.