Externalizing Borders, Externalizing Harms: The Violent Impact of EU Policies on Migrant Rights in Libya

By Summer Downs

In the fall of 2017, footage of a migrant slave auction in Libya reached viral status on social media and online news outlets, prompting a wave of shock and anger in the Western world. The coverage of this incident blamed these horrifying abuses of African migrants on ‘smugglers’, reflecting a larger trend within the European Union’s rhetoric on the migration crisis in the Mediterranean. But this discursive focus on the criminal actions of smugglers serves as a convenient façade to mask the EU’s complicity in the torture, detention, and exploitation of thousands of migrants in Libya. The world’s wealthiest nations – including the United States, Australia, and the EU’s member states – have increasingly adopted border externalization policies that attempt “to stop incoming migrants before they reach their final destination” [1]. These border externalizing policies are directly linked to the extreme human rights violations and suffering among migrant populations in Libya.

The externalization approach has been an important feature of border security in wealthy nations since the end of the Cold War, supported by nativist and xenophobic politics that strive to keep migrants ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The most recent manifestations of these policies rely on the fictional construction of a ‘crisis’ of migration, drawing political support by convincing EU citizens that migrants represent a major security threat and must be prevented from ever reaching the EU’s shores. A sophisticated system of instruments - including visas, offshore interdiction, externalized asylum processing agreements, and offshore detention - is deployed to extend the reach of EU border control and to restrict the movements of migrants [1]. This externalization process extends across the Mediterranean and into North Africa, where Libya (a major transit country for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa) is located. Although Libya used to have an open door policy toward the hundreds of thousands of migrants that flow in and out of its borders, pressure from the EU in the early 2000s led its government to adopt the increasingly restrictive practices of criminalization and migrant detention that characterize it today [2].

The government of Italy has been a major player in the externalization policies that affect migrants in Libya, as one of the EU countries on the so-called ‘frontlines’ of the migration ‘crisis’. Since 2003, Italy has been entering into semi-secretive agreements and signing public memorandums of understanding with Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) to enforce cooperation on migration restriction and enforcement, with the ultimate goal of enabling the Libyan government to detain migrants before they can reach Italy, where they could lodge an asylum claim in the EU ([2], [3]). The major incentive for collaboration with the EU currently is Italian funding, which has been directed toward operating offshore detention facilities in Libya, providing surveillance technologies to police Libya’s southern border, and financing the activities of the Libyan Coast Guard [2]. Although Libya recently asserted some resistance to EU border externalization by publicly opposing the EU’s proposal of “disembarkation platforms”, the reality is that similar processing and detention centers already exist in Libya, holding an estimated 7,000 – 10,000 people ([2]. [3]) Pressure from the EU has been very effective in convincing the Libyan GNA to cooperate in creating a migration apparatus in Libya that works to the EU’s benefit.

In conjunction with Italian funding given to Libya to increase border externalization, the EU’s border agency Frontex has ‘rescued’ some migrants at sea while simultaneously pushing many others back to northern Africa (allegedly to counter smuggling). Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum, which rescued 150,000 migrants in 2013, was replaced after one year with Operation Triton, which intentionally left massive gaps in the waters near Libya’s coast where most fatal incidents occur [2]. Renamed Operation Sophia in 2015, this counter-smuggling operation is utilized to close Europe’s borders to migrants at sea and to transfer responsibility for search and rescue missions to the Libyan Coast Guard. The Italian government has effectively shut its borders to boats arriving from Libya, handing responsibility over to the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept boats heading for Italy and send the migrants back to detention in Libya (a country which has not ratified the Refugee Convention, which contains legal protections for refugees) [2]. There are also reports that Italy has funded rival militias who control other sections of the coast, potentially contributing to continued conflict in the region. As a result of these and other EU border externalization policies, the number of migrants reaching Europe’s shores has been drastically reduced in recent years [3].

But this resounding ‘success’ in keeping migrants out has exacted a heavy cost in migrant pain and death. Political pressure and economic incentives exerted by Italy and the EU have created a situation of widespread - and sometimes fatal - abuse within Libya and along the sea route between Libya and Italy. Recent research directly connects the EU’s policies of “offshore [border] enforcement” with increased fatalities in the Mediterranean Sea between 2006 and 2015 [4]. These authors assert that despite the humanitarian rhetoric, border “externalization creates greater loss of life” in the waters of the Mediterranean [4]. In fact, Libya is the most frequently reported country of origin for boats affected by a loss incident, in spite of – or perhaps because of – Italy’s involvement with Libya’s Coast Guard [4]. The EU’s policies of restriction and externalization are a major causal factor in the humanitarian crisis of deaths in the Mediterranean.

In addition to migrant deaths at sea, border externalization policies have created conditions of horrific migrant suffering in Libya that make the prospect of death in the Mediterranean an understandable risk for many migrants. The intersection of local instability and EU-influenced criminalization of migration makes migrants in Libya vulnerable to capture by militias and smugglers. The Libyan Civil War, which has been active on and off since 2011, has created an environment wherein state and non-state actors can terrorize migrants with relative impunity. These captors imprison migrants in appalling conditions in unofficial detention camps or sell them in slave markets for a profit, as mentioned above. In both militia- and government-operated detention camps, migrants reportedly face torture, sexual assault, inhumane conditions, and executions carried out by guards [2]. Bolstered by funding from Italy, the Libyan Coast Guard delivers migrants directly to these abusive detention camps after their apprehension at sea [2]. In response to the allegations of widespread human rights violations in Libyan detention camps, the EU has justified its financial support of the camps in terms of providing humanitarian assistance to improve conditions [2]. But this is a weak excuse when the history of the EU’s involvement in the Libyan migration control apparatus, currently controlled by the GNA, is revealed. If it were not for the EU, Libya may not have detention centers at all; and even if some of the EU’s funding improves conditions in certain detention centers, its ultimate effect is to uphold the violent system of migration criminalization and vulnerability to abuse in Libya.

Instead of spouting hollow rhetoric about humanitarian action, the EU could take two important steps to address the real harms caused by externalizing policies. First, the EU needs to provide more legal pathways for migration that ensure the safety and dignity of migrants, removing the need to attempt dangerous journeys through the Libyan desert and across the Mediterranean Sea. As Cone & Norman acknowledge, “migration to Europe is inevitable” no matter which policies are in place, and therefore Europe should abandon the project of deterring migrants through harsh, restrictive policies [3]. Second, the EU should reallocate the funding which currently supports detention camps and border surveillance in Libya toward a program of legal immigration reform, eliminating detention altogether. Libya did not have detention camps until Europe became involved, and the EU should use its influence to reverse this harmful imposition. For too long the EU has utilized a policy of border externalization in order to defer accountability under international law and to shift blame for violations of human rights. It is time for the EU to take responsibility for the effects of its harmful – and often fatal – policies. 
 

References

[3] Cone, Devon and Kelsey Norman. July 17, 2018. “Migration in the Mediterranean: A Second Crisis of Europe’s Making.” Political Violence at a Glance. https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2018/07/17/migration-in-the-mediterranean-a-second-crisis-of-europes-making/

[2] Global Detention Project (GDP). August 2018. “Country Report – Immigration Detention in Libya: ‘A Human Rights Crisis’”. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/immigration-detention-in-libya-a-human-rights-crisis

[4] Williams, Kira, and Alison Mountz. 2018. "Between Enforcement and Precarity: Externalization and Migrant Deaths at Sea." International Migration.

[1] Zaiotti, Ruben. 2016. "Mapping remote control: The externalization of migration management in the 21st century." Externalizing Migration
Management: Europe, North America, and the spread of’ remote control’
practices. Edited by Ruben Zaiotti, Routledge, pp. 19-46.