Nils Melzers latest report on migration related torture was submitted in november 2018, and he stresses, that there has been very little improvement if any, since he undertook the task as UN watchdog on torture.
Since then Libya has been engulfed by civil war, making migrants even more vulnerable. In the beginning of juli, the migrant center Tajoura east of Tripoli was bombed, killing at least 44 migrant and wounding 130.
Terrible conditions for migrants
The Libyan Coast Guard has increasingly conducted search and rescue operations in the waters between Libya and Italy and now intercepts most of the migrants and asylum seekers attempting to reach Europe from Libya.
An anti migration effort, made possible by the support, training and equipment, provided by the EU since the refugee crisis in 2015.
“Neither the EU nor the individual member states can claim with any degree of credibility that they do not know what is going on in Libya. We know the situation of migrants and what is going on in the camps, to which migrants and asylum seekers are returned to”, Nils Melzer says.
Mr. Melzer is a professor at international law at University of Glasgow University, Human Rights Chair at Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and since 2016 UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“Conditions for irregular migrants in Libya have been terrible for years.They are detained in horrible condition and on a large scale subjected to arbitrary detention and torture, including rape. We have seen videos of slave markets and we even have confirmed reports on large scale organ trade. There is so much information available that no one can claim to be ignorant of the risks involved in forcing migrant to return to Libya”, Nils Melzer says..
Breaching the conventions
Nils Melzer accuses the EU and member states of being in violation of at least three international conventions, because it is the training, equipment and cooperation with the EU that encourages and enables the Libyan Coast Guard to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from reaching the shores of Europe.
Exactly how many migrants the Libyan Coast Guard intercepts are unknown, but according to Amnesty International at least 3.000 are currently detained in Libya. According to the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, 3.404 migrants arrived in Malta and Italy from Libya during the first five and a half months of 2019. This is significantly lower than the 337.278 arrivals, when the refugee crisis peaked in 2015 and 2016.
“There is no doubt that this push-back policy is violating the conventions. Already in 2012 the European Court of Human Rights found it illegal to return migrants to Libya because of the risks of abuse”, Nils Melzer says.
“If you prevent migrants and asylum seekers from reaching safety, you are responsible for the resulting foreseeable harm. That you have found someone else to do the work for you, does not absolve you from responsibility”, he says.
“By training, equipping and encouraging the Libyan Coast Guard, making sure it is able to intercept the migrants at sea and return them to Libya, the EU and member states actively prevent migrants and asylum seekers from reaching safety.”
The UN watchdog on torture point to three conventions being violated. One is the UN Convention on Torture, that prohibits states from handing over people to a another state, if there is a risk that they will be subjected to torture or other inhuman treatment.
Secondly he points to the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights where several provisions are violated and thirdly to the Vienna Convention, stipulating that states must interpret and exercise their international obligations in good faith.