The Italy-Libya Deal — Outsourcing the Dirty Work
In February 2017, Marco Minniti brokered a deal that solved Europe's migration problem the same way the EU-Turkey deal had: by paying someone else to commit the human rights violations necessary to keep Fortress Europe intact. Italy recruited a Libyan Coast Guard from the ruins of the Gaddafi regime — in some cases directly from the militia groups and trafficking networks it was supposed to dismantle. NGOs were the last witnesses left in the water. That made them a problem that also needed solving.
By 2017, on the eve of the Italian elections, migration had risen to the top of the agenda of campaigns across the political spectrum. It formed the bedrock of two rising anti-establishment parties: the populist Five Star Movement headed by Luigi de Maio and the far-right Lega party headed by Matteo Salvini. While the Five Star Movement and Lega pledged the deportation of competing quotas of migrants in the build-up towards the elections, Marco Minniti, the incumbent center-left party’s Interior Minister and former head of the Italian Secret Services, aimed to salvage his party’s electability by tackling migration “at its source.”
In February 2017, Minniti brokered the Italy-Libya deal, a close imitation of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal. Since International Law prohibits the refoulement or “return” of refugees, such third-party agreements allow the EU to perform “refoulements by proxy”: outsourcing border protection to a non-member state (often a former colony) by providing it with material and financial support to intercept and return migrant boats for them. While these agreements come at immense financial expense, they have the benefit of keeping “European values” intact while ensuring that someone else commits the human rights violations necessary for maintaining Fortress Europe.
In the case of Libya, the venture proved especially challenging. Given the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) had not survived the Gaddafi regime, Italy spearheaded the effort to create one, sometimes recruiting, as later emerged, from ex-militia groups and human trafficking cartels, to whom it provided ships, surveillance technology and skillsets in exchange for heightened patrols of the Libyan shoreline and territorial waters. The record drop in numbers of migrants reaching Italy precipitated Mario Minniti into the international spotlight as Italy’s most popular politician and the golden boy of the European establishment.
The Italy-Libya deal was a consolidation of Triton’s efforts to drain the Central Mediterranean of European assets, effectively sealing the sea passage. Under the auspices of the deal, the Libyan Coast Guard expanded its field of operations further from the coast while European assets retreated northwards, avoiding encounters with migrant boats. This meant that shipwrecked migrants would either drown or be “rescued” and returned to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard. Either way, they would not make it to Europe.
NGOs posed a threat to this scheme. The only European assets left patrolling the Search and Rescue area on active lookout for migrant boats in distress, we represented migrants’ last hope not only of being rescued, but of reaching safety in Europe. It is for this reason that rescue NGOs came to be compared to a 21st century underground railroad.
Rescue activists were also the only people left who could witness the daily human rights abuses committed by the Libyan Coast Guard against migrants. As long as we were there, no leader of the European establishment could claim not to have known that the security of Fortress Europe is built on the torture, humiliation and death meted out to migrants by EU-funded Libyan militias.
By mid-2017, we had partnered with human rights organizations to expose the inhumane conditions under which migrants were detained by the Libyan authorities and of the human rights violations and pull-backs committed against migrants on the high seas Libyan Coast Guard. With the EU accused of funding human rights abuses, the Italy-Libya success story was under threat.
Manifesto by Refugees in Libya and Alliance with Refugees in Libya
On February 2017 a Memorandum of Understatement (MoU) was signed by the Italian and Libyan governments on “fighting illegal migration”. This agreement, with the support of European Union funding and coordination by Frontex, has trained, financed and equipped Libyan forces who have systematically abducted, arbitrarily detained, tortured, enslaved, killed and raped migrants and we, Refugees in Libya, are among its victims. Through this agreement, Italy and the EU are currently aiding and abetting the perpetration of crimes against humanity in Libya. We hold them directly accountable for purposefully creating a racist torturing environment in Libya as a xenophobic attempt to deter migration.
Even in Italy, this immoral agreement has led to a deterioration of the rule of law, with the Italian government ignoring an International Criminal Court arrest warrant and instead illegally spying on human rights defenders. We, Refugees in Libya, have denounced, as witnesses and victims, the Italian state obstruction of justice when they released our torturer Osama Almasri. Our communications have been spied on by Italian secret services, as it has been ascertained in the Paragon case. We, the victims, strictly controlled by the Italian state, while the criminals are free to continue their acts.
The MoU has been violating our rights as refugees for eight years. But we believe that most Italian people do not agree with that. We believe that most Italians don’t want their taxes to be used to train and equip war criminals. We believe most Italians don’t want to force human beings into torture camps. That is why we call all those Italian citizens and politicians to support us. If nothing is done by November 2nd, 2025, the criminal MoU will be automatically renewed for three more years. We shall not let this happen.
But our demands go beyond just stopping harm. We ask for justice and reparations for all of us who were victims of Italian and EU policies in Libya. We want evacuation, protection and dignity. That is why we demand:
STOP supporting our torturers. The training, equipping, financing and coordination of Libyan actors involved in crimes against refugees and migrants by Italy and the EU must end:
- Cancel the renewal of the 2017 Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding
- Suspend all EU-funded projects supporting Libyan criminal militias
- Stop Frontex sending coordinates of refugee boats to Libyan criminal militias
End Impunity! Victims and survivors of the abuses resulting from the MoU deserve justice and reparation. To achieve that, Italy must:
- Issue humanitarian visas to Italy to all those refugees and migrants who have suffered abuses under MoU-supported Libyan criminals
- Financially compensate all those refugees and migrants who have suffered abuses under MoU-supported Libyan criminals
- Officially apologize for the harm caused
Give alternatives to the refugees still in Libya to escape the dangerous environment you created. Instead of funding criminals, we demand that Italy and the EU:
- Relaunch state-led search and rescue in the Mediterranean
- Promote and expand humanitarian corridors and other legal ways to evacuate refugees to places of safety
- Fund Libyan civil society organizations supporting migrant and refugee communities
We, Refugees in Libya, are not in our country of origin. But that does not make us less human. And the first step to recognize our humanity is to stop supporting our torturers.
STOP THE MEMORANDUM!
https://www.refugeesinlibya.org/post/stop-the-memorandum-italy-libya
https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/25/1/41/7715989
https://www.asgi.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ITALY-LIBYA-MEMORANDUM-02.02.2017.pdf