Nigerian migrants who survived a deadly sea crossing last year filed a lawsuit against Italy for violating their rights by supporting Libya’s efforts to return them to North Africa, Reuters reported. The seventeen plaintiffs said Italy violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including that people not be subjected to torture, held in slavery, or have their lives put in danger.
Seventeen plaintiffs petitioned the European Court of Human Rights last week, according to Violeta Moreno-Lax, a legal advisor for the Global Legal Action Network, as quoted by Reuters. The United Nations and several rights groups have earlier informed that migrants face these conditions in Libya.
This is the first lawsuit against Italy for its decision to back the Libyan Coast Guard. However, the country lost a case in the same court in 2012 for directly handing over migrants intercepted at sea to Libyan authorities.
The legal process can take up to three years, but if the migrants win, they can be awarded damages, and Italy would be forced to abandon its policy of equipping, training and coordinating the Libyan Coast Guard, Ms. Moreno-Lax noted and further explained:
Using the Libyan Coast Guard as a proxy to turn back migrant boats is just a new way of camouflaging (Italy’s) strategy of fighting irregular migration in the Mediterranean by trapping them in what the Italian Foreign Ministry itself has qualified as ‘the hell’ of Libya.
According to Reuters, this lawsuit highlights a stand-off between humanitarian groups seeking to save lives on the open seas and Italian authorities backed by the European Union who are trying to stop people from making the dangerous crossing in the first place.
Libyan naval spokesman Ayoub Qassem said the coast guard does its job in line with the terms agreed with Italy, while the violations of human rights are considered as “individual acts” and not “Libyan state acts”.
