Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy, 2012

On 6 May 2009 three ships from the Italian customs police (Guardia di Finanza) halted a boat carrying 231 migrants (191 men and 40 women) that had left Libya heading for the Italian coast. It was stopped approximately 35 miles south of Lampedusa on the high seas, in the Maltese SAR zone. The passengers were taken on board the Italian vessels and returned to Libya without identification and assessment of their asylum claims. A month later, the returned asylum-seekers filed (and successively won) a case against Italy at the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECtHR found Italy in violation of the prohibition of collective expulsion (Art. 4, Protocol 4 ECHR) and the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Art. 3 ECHR).

The judgment set a binding precedent: rescued or intercepted persons must be brought to a place of safety, and states remain responsible for human rights violations even beyond their own territory (extraterritorial jurisdiction).

Obligations under International Maritime and Human Rights Law

The Hirsi judgment reinforced pre-existing international obligations:

• UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea): duty to rescue persons in distress at sea.
• SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea) and the SAR Convention (International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue): rescued persons must be delivered to a place of safety.
• Refugee Convention (1951): principle of non-refoulement, no one may be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or inhuman treatment.
• ECHR: prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment (Art. 3) and prohibition of collective expulsion (Art. 4, Prot. 4).

Taken together, these obligations prohibit returning people rescued at sea to unsafe countries (such as Libya) and require European states to guarantee access to asylum procedures.

Italy's response was to shift its border regime to pushbacks by proxy, through the Italy-Libya deal and the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. The judgment shaped the following decade of struggles over freedom of movement in the Mediterranean.

SOURCES:
Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy (27765/09), European Court of Human Rights, Grand Chamber, Judgment, Strasbourg, 23 February 2012
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-109231

Wikipedia: Case of Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_of_Hirsi_Jamaa_and_Others_v._Italy

Amnesty International: "Italy: 'Historic' European Court judgment upholds migrants' rights"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/02/italy-historic-european-court-judgment-upholds-migrants-rights/

Forensic Oceanography: "Mare Clausum" (2018)
https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2018-05-07-FO-Mare-Clausum-full-EN.pdf