Today 45 migrants and refugees died off Libyan coast; one 16 year old Sudanese boy died off the French coast. These are all unlawful deaths, which engage the responsibility of European and British Governments to respect or protect the right to life. WHY? uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lib…
First, to avoid migration across their borders, the EU/UK rely on the policy of extraterritoriality to stop migrants before they reach their territory. Such policies include assisting, funding or training Libyan agencies to arrest, detain, rescue or disembark refugees/migrants
There is plenty of evidence proving that Libyan authorities and armed groups are responsible for serious human rights violations, including violations of the right to life., of migrants.
In the face of Libya gross violations of refugees' human rights, the EU/UK must not “render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation”. Continuing to do so against evidence of systemic abuse amounts to aiding and assisting extraterritorial killings and deprivation of life
Second, international law requires States to take “all reasonable precautionary steps to protect life and prevent excessive violence” by States, their agents and non-State actors.
States must protect the right to life, e.g by exercising due diligence to prevent the reasonably foreseeable deaths in hazardous terrain or seas on their borders and to prevent arbitrary deprivations of life by private actors. These include effective search and rescue operations
Even in high seas, outside the territorial jurisdiction of coastal States, three Maritime Conventions impose on them the duty to provide an adequate and effective search and rescue service, “regardless of the nationality or status” of the person in distress or their circumstances
Worse still, the EU/UK are targeting those engaged in search and rescue, by accusing humanitarian organizations of colluding with smuggling networks, a crime under most domestic laws, placing administrative burdens, and even criminalizing humanitarian action.
The Palermo smuggling convention limits the definition of smuggling to the procurement of illegal entry by a person who acts for a "financial or other material benefit." Their specific intent was to exclude humanitarians from criminal prosecution.
All EU Member States and UK criminalize the facilitation of irregular entry but only eight EU Member States explicitly integrate the humanitarian clause into their domestic law. It is unacceptable for States to prosecute and target people for saving lives.
Third, it is HIGHLY hypocritical to put the blame of these unlawful deaths on smugglers when so little is done to investigate and prosecute smugglers who kill or torture. States investigate smuggling, not smuggling and killings. Because death is thought to deter migration
The Palermo Convention establishes that circumstances that “endanger, or are likely to endanger, the lives or safety of the migrants concerned; or that entail inhuman or degrading treatment, including for exploitation, of such migrants” constitute aggravating circumstances
Aggravated smuggling ought to be prioritized and the object of dedicated resources and renewed commitments on the part of the EU/UK, including towards effective cooperation. This is not the case.
Mass casualties of refugees and migrants; a regime of impunity for the perpetrators, and an overall tolerance for these fatalities: this can only be described as a human rights and humanitarian crisis and it demands a radical change in EU/UK approaches, to uphold human rights
