GENEVA — European Union backing for Libyan authorities that stop and detain migrants means the bloc has “aided and abetted” the commission of rights violations against migrants, an investigator for a U.N. mission said on Monday.
The European Union and member states have given support and training to the Libyan coastguard, which returns migrants stopped at sea to detention centers, and provides funding to Libyan border management programs via the Italian government.
The investigator, Chaloka Beyani, was speaking after a U.N. fact-finding mission presented a report saying crimes against humanity were carried out against migrants in detention centers.
“Although we’re not saying that the EU and its member states have committed these crimes. The point is that the support given has aided and abetted the commission of the crimes,” said Beyani, one of the independent mission’s members.
A European Commission spokesperson for migration did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
However, Peter Stano, lead spokesperson for EU external affairs, told a news briefing before the report’s release: “We are providing assistance to help them (Libya) to improve their performance when it comes to search and rescue, be it with vessels, be it with equipment or with training with the focus on human rights.”
The criticism of the EU echoes that from the U.N. human rights chief and from Human Rights Watch and other rights groups in previous years.
The mission, presenting its final report on an array of abuses committed by all sides in Libya, said it would pass any evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court.
It said crimes had been committed by both state security forces and armed militia groups, which acted to repress dissent and carried out murders, rapes, enslavement, judicial killings and forced disappearances.
Libyan authorities were not immediately available to comment. They have previously denied any systematic abuse of migrants.
Libya has had little peace since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising and split in 2014 between warring eastern and western factions. Major fighting ended in 2020, but there is little progress to a political solution and armed factions dominate on the ground.
“The violations and abuses investigated by the mission were connected primarily to the consolidation of power and wealth by militias and other state-affiliated groups,” the report said.
“Trafficking, enslavement, forced labor, imprisonment, extortion and smuggling of vulnerable migrants generated significant revenue for individuals, groups and state institutions,” it added.
Abuses were particularly acute for the 670,000 migrants in Libya, who the report said faced “an abhorrent cycle of violence” from the moment smugglers took them into Libya and involving repeated detentions without judicial review.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Angus McDowall; Editing by Alison Williams)
