The clandestine problem on Europe’s ‘African’ island

By David Cronin

Date: 12/05/05

The tiny Italian island of Lampedusa - 200km from Sicily and 120km from Libya, and geographically a part of Africa - has become a contentious focal point for EU relations with countries on the other side of the Mediterranean. To the chagrin of human rights groups, Italy forcibly sent 180 migrants from there to Libya in March. The mass expulsion was, according to the campaigners, in violation of international law on refugee protection which gives each asylum-seeker the right to have his or her application considered individually.

Clandestine migration between north Africa and Europe has assumed a prominent place on the EU's agenda recently. The Union's justice ministers have begun discussing the possibility of a formal accord with Tripoli on managing migratory flows. So far Italy and Malta are the only two of the EU25 to have 'structured co-operation' with Libya on these questions.

It is not difficult to understand why Libya concentrates the minds of policymakers. By African standards, Libya is a prosperous country, attracting an estimated 100,000 foreigners a year from elsewhere in Africa. Many of these migrants then travel on to Europe.

But the UN's High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is urging that the EU tread carefully in any discussions with the Libyan authorities.

Libya has ratified a refugee convention drawn up by the former Organisation of African Unity, which defines the criteria for granting protection to those fleeing persecution, as well as conferring an obligation to liaise with the UNHCR. Yet though the UNHCR has an office in Tripoli, it is not satisfied with the level of contact it has with the Tripoli authorities.

Diederik Kramers, the UNHCR's Brussels spokesman, says there is no "common base" from a legal point of view between the EU and Libya. Unlike the EU's member states, Libya has not accepted the 1951 Geneva Conventions, the cornerstone of international refugee law.

There is no guarantee that people expelled from Europe to Libya will not then be sent on to countries where they could face torture or even death. In July last year Libya forced more than 100 Eritreans home. The Asmara authorities are believed to have arrested all of them on return and detained them incommunicado. Human Rights Watch has drawn parallels between that expulsion and a previous one - also from Libya to Eritrea - in 2002. The group says it has received reliable information that some of those expelled in 2002 were tortured.

Should Libya detain those sent back to it on its soil, there are also indications that they could be held in poor conditions. An unpublished report from the European Commission - based on an inspection visit to Libya in 2004 - has cited examples of immigrants being locked up arbitrarily in the country. At a detention centre in Sulmam in northern Libya, it found that 200 migrants had to sleep on the floor because of a shortage of beds.

Mourad Allal from the Euromed Non-Governmental Platform says that Libya has also repatriated migrants to Tunisia and Egypt. Mass deportations of migrants from Italy to Libya, he adds, run counter to Europe's interests in having cordial relations with the Mediterranean region. "I am convinced that clandestine immigration is an important question that needs to be resolved - but not in this manner."

Article reports on the European Union's plans for closer co-operation with Libya on the issue of clandestine migration from the North African country to EU territory and the possibility of expulsion.

EU: EEAS: EU Relations with Libya http://eeas.europa.eu/libya/index_en.htm

---