MIGRANTS AT SEA

An EJIL: Talk! Blog article by Jean-Pierre Gauci:  “On 10/11 May 2017 various news outlets reported a maritime operation by the Libyan authorities, in coordination with the Italian Search and Rescue Authority, in which 500 individuals were intercepted in international waters and returned to Libya. This operation amounted to refoulment in breach of customary international law and several treaties (including the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights), and an internationally wrongful act is one for which Italy bears international legal responsibility…..

….The European Union and its Member States have consistently sought mechanisms to curtail the number potential asylum seekers arriving to Europe’s shores and in doing so have worked closely with third countries. When such actions, reflective as they are of a broader policy, amount to human rights violations and internationally wrongful act, there is scope for responsibility for the EU States involved – in this case Italy. Italy’s action in this case clearly activate its responsibility for the international wrongful act, both directly through the instruction given (with awareness of the consequences), and through its assistance of Libya in the perpetration of the wrongful act.”

Full post here.

The PACE Committee on Migration (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) on 2 June unanimously approved a draft resolution entitled “Human rights implications of the European response to transit migration across the Mediterranean” making a series of recommendations to the EU, Greece, Italy, and Turkey.  The draft resolution is based on the report prepared by Miltiadis Varvitsiotis (Greece, EPP/CD) and will be considered by the Assembly at its next plenary session in Strasbourg, 26-30 June 2017. The draft resolution notes the existence of concerns in both Greece and Italy.

The draft resolution also contains several misguided recommendations calling on the EU to step up its cooperation with the Libyan Coast Guards and to engage with Libyan authorities to improve conditions in Libyan migrant detention centres.  These particular recommendations are disappointing and disturbing coming from PACE whose mission is to uphold the shared values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

PACE Press Statement here.

Report from Rapporteur Miltiadis Varvitsiotis here.

‘Boat Refugees’ and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive Approach – Book Launch Event 6 June 2017, 4.45-5.30pm – Woburn Suite, Senate House, London.

All are welcome to attend a book launch event of ‘’Boat Refugees’ and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive Approach’, the latest publication in the International Refugee Law Book Series.

The International Refugee Law Book Series is published by Martinus Nijhoff under the auspices of the Refugee Law Initiative. It provides a platform for outstanding new studies of the intersecting legal regimes for the protection of refugees and displaced persons. Monographs and edited volumes in the series aim to advance scholarly and practitioner insight into how ‘refugee law’ is evolving globally, focusing particularly on its interaction with other bodies of international law and manifestation in regions outside Europe.

Book Launch Event – Chair: David Cantor (Refugee Law Initiative) Introduction by Editors: Efthymios Papastavridis / Violeta Moreno-Lax Comment by UN: Francois Crepeau (UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants) Comment by IMO: Jan de Boer (Senior Legal Officer – International Maritime Organisation).

This event will be held from 4.45-5.30pm on 6 June 2017 in the Woburn Suite, Senate House (Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, UK). Registration is not required.

‘Boat Refugees’ and Migrants at Sea: A Comprehensive Approach Edited by Violeta Moreno-Lax (Queen Mary University of London), and Efthymios Papastavridis (Democritus University of Thrace, the Academy of Athens and Oxford University).

This book aims to address ‘boat migration’ with a holistic approach. The different chapters consider the multiple facets of the phenomenon and the complex challenges they pose, bringing together knowledge from several disciplines and regions of the world within a single collection. Together, they provide an integrated picture of transnational movements of people by sea with a view to making a decisive contribution to our understanding of current trends and future perspectives and their treatment from legal-doctrinal, legal-theoretical, and non-legal angles. The final goal is to unpack the tension that exists between security concerns and individual rights in this context and identify tools and strategies to adequately manage its various components, garnering an inter-regional / multi-disciplinary dialogue, including input from international law, law of the sea, maritime security, migration and refugee studies, and human rights, to address the position of ‘migrants at sea’ thoroughly.

A new report from Refugees International by Izza Leghtas:  “…..Whether they went to Libya to work or just as a place of transit on their way to safety and protection in Europe, migrants and refugees who have spent weeks, months or years in Libya face abuses that include arbitrary detention, torture, unlawful killings, rape, forced labor, kidnapping, and even slavery. Many are held by smugglers for months or detained in official or semi-official detention centers in inhumane conditions where even their most basic rights as human beings are denied. Libya itself has been in turmoil since 2011, with three different governments competing for power and militias and criminal networks operating across the country. More than 60,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe between January 1 and May 24, 2017, with the vast majority landing in Italy. Eager to stem the flow of people using this route, the European Union (EU) and its member states have deployed measures which include training and equipping the Libyan coast guard and promoting returns to people’s countries of origin. As the violence and chaos in Libya continue, the EU must ensure that its actions do not result in refugees and migrants being returned to torture or other forms of ill-treatment in Libya. The EU must make rescue at sea a priority. The EU should also provide solutions for people in need of international protection, including safe and legal paths to protection in Europe while pushing Libya to fully ensure all human rights protections for refugees and migrants in that country…..”

Full report here.

Source: Guardia Costiera; Excel spreadsheet with data: 2017-04_Guardia Costiera SAR statistics and FRONTEX statistics from 2016-Jan

From the Guardian: “More than 30 people have drowned after about 200 people fell from an overcrowded migrant boat off the coast of Libya, the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea…..” Photo from MOAS.eu.

Source: moas.eu all rights reserved

AI Public Statement: “Amnesty International is deeply concerned that Italian authorities may be attempting to circumvent their obligation to protect people fleeing widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses in Libya by facilitating the interception of refugees and migrant boats by Libyan authorities in the central Mediterranean.

On 10 May 2017 a request for assistance from a refugees and migrant boat to the Italian coastguard resulted in a Libyan coastguard vessel intercepting the boat in distress in international waters and returning up to 500 people to face illegal detention, torture, rape, inhuman and degrading treatment and other grave abuses in Libya.  The incident represented an extremely worrying departure from the procedures so far applied to search and rescue operations of refugees and migrants in the central Mediterranean. …. Read full statement.

From FIDH:  “Boats 4 People published an information guide for the families of migrants –and their supporters- who died or went missing while crossing the Central Mediterranean sea on their way to Italy. According to the UNHCR since 2014, more than 12 000 people lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea during their migration to Europe, 5 022 of them in the year 2016 alone. Most of them remain ‘non-identified’. … The document produced by Boats 4 People about the Italian process to establish the identity of the dead or missing, is the result of nearly 2 years of gathering information from institutional bodies, associations, activists, researchers and practitioners. It has been designed as an implementation step-by-step guide for the families and their supporters, given the indifference of the European countries about migrants’ fate. For these countries, dead migrants are only entitled to being counted and reported for statistics purposes.”

EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini yesterday said that EU actions in Niger, “where more than 80% of the [migrant] flows [to Libya] transit”, have been responsible for a significant reduction in the number of persons reaching Libya:  “I can tell you one number that will strike you probably – in the last 9 months through [EU] action with Niger, we moved from 76 000 migrants passing through Niger into Libya to 6 000.”

An April 29^th Libya Herald article by Sami Zaptia reported comments made by Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Siala (Presidency Council / Government of National Accord – PC/GNA) “that Libya has received ‘‘international requests’’ to carry out ‘military strikes within Libya against militias’ engaged in smuggling illegal migrants” and that Libya had refused the requests.

The article does not indicate who made the requests, but the requests probably came from the EU on behalf of the EUNAVFOR MED operation and stemmed from its mandate to disrupt, capture, or dispose of vessels or assets used by smugglers.

A Libyan coastguard vessel yesterday intercepted a large migrant boat in international waters and returned the approximately 500 migrants to Libya. This incident is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, it may represent the first such interception/rescue operation by Libya in international waters in recent years. Second, the Libyan vessel may have been one of coastguard vessels recently donated by Italy and whose personnel have been trained by the EUNAVFOR MED operation, though this is not clear. And third, an NGO rescue vessel operated by Sea-Watch was responding to the migrant vessel and beginning SAR operations, but according to press reports, the Rome Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre , directed the Libyan coastguard to assume “on-scene command.”  The result of this was the return of the migrants to Libya.  While this was perhaps not technically a “push-back” operation, the effect is the same. The orders issued by the Rome Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre determined where the intercepted/migrants would be taken.

The Libyan coastguard vessel also apparently almost collided with the NGO vessel.