MOCADEM in Action: Following the Italian Road in Libya
February 5th, 2023 - written by: migration-control.info
Exactly one year ago we have published a leaked EU document on MOCADEM (Operational Coordination Mechanism for the External Dimension of Migration) on this website. This document described a new level of „operational action“ eintailing
“any action which may contribute to the attainment of the objectives of the EU in its relations with a non-EU country in the field of migration, including: a political or diplomatic approach, an action in support of the third country concerned, including in the area of capacity building or humanitarian aid, the mobilisation of any available leverage, for example financial support, or the tools of visa policy or any other policy.”
Now we have received a new document, directed from the EU Presidency to the MOCADEM delegations. The paper shows that the EU's use of „any available leverage“ includes the use of humanitarian aid as a means of keeping refugees out of Europe, as we already noted one year ago. Furthermore it sheds a light on the activities of the Italian intelligence agencies, which started in 2017 and have now become official EU policy. They are directed to foster cooperation with Libyan (and Sudanese) militias to stop people on the move.
The new document also shows that the 20-years-old EU-policy dream of external Transit Processing Centres is still valid and alive, and that humanitarian wording and antimigrant policies are just two sides of the same coin in the eyes of European policy makers, as becomes clear in their plans for disemarbation in Libya (see beneath).
Italian Policy since 2017
Six years ago the Italian Minister of Interior, Minitti, negotiated a memorandum to contain migration with the West Libyan government. It was signed in February 2017 and automatically prolonged in October 2019. There is a consistent link of action from Minitti to Salvini and Meloni. The memorandum has been renewed a second time just a few days ago, amid warnings by humanitarian organisations that this might make Rome and the European Union complicit in crimes against humanity. As Al Jazeera reported,
"A June 2022 report by the United Nations Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya found that migrants faced “murder, enforced disappearance, torture, enslavement, sexual violence, rape, and other inhumane acts … in connection with their arbitrary detention”.
In September 2022, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found that crimes against migrants in Libya “may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes”.
You can find the report here and an analysis of Statewatch here. A report by Action Aid in March 2021 stated that "Libya lies at the heart of a strategy for which funds from Italy, EU institutions and other member states have been channelled through an opaque financing mechanism" with the central aim of reducing migration from Africa to Europe. In this text published on our website in December 2022, the Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) has documented the implementation of a System of forced return to Libya. Moreover we published the Draft Action Plan Libya which was handed out to delegations by the European Council in October 2021.
12 Actions in the Document
The current document from January 11 2023 is structured in 12 “actions” to be performed in 2023. The following bullet points try to summarise and interprete the main direction of activities proposed by the Presidency:
• The Presidency confirms its support for the Italian-Libyan Memorandum. The work shall be based on an "updated mapping of the main public actors" in Libya. These actors are warlords, business profiteers, militia and tribal leaders, all of them looking to be bribed with EU expenditures.
• The Presidency sets 15 Mil Euro from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) and 46 Mil Euro from the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) until mid-2023 for border management and stopping migrants in the region. But it does not mention who are the “regional actors” receiving this money. Minitti once travelled with suitcases full of cash – how will the EU put this into practice now?
• The Presidency proposes to deploy 59 Mil Euro EUTF funds for the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, and an extra 10 Mil Euro under NDICI for coast surveillance in Libya and Tunisia, "developing arrangements for more coordinated search and rescue and interception operations, by linking up Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres in Libya and Tunisia with their equivalents in Italy and Malta".
• The EU is set to strengthen its border mission in Libya (EUBAM), supporting border controls at the southern borders of Libya.
In the document search and rescue (SAR) and “interception” are mentioned in the same sentence and they seem to be perceived as the same thing. The paper makes clear that the Presidency wants boat people to be pulled back to Tunisia and Libya, what ever it takes, lives and bribes.
Disembarkation
With Action 6, the Presidency clearly combines the human rights agencies and their work with the main purpose of the EU's engagement in Libya, namely disembarkation:
"Explore ways to improve the process to disembark migrants in Libya in foreseeable locations, for them to be treated in full respect of their human rights by Libyan authorities, with full access by UNHCR and IOM.
Agree a common approach with UN actors and international NGOs regarding access to unofficial detention centres in Libya and engage Libyan authorities on putting an end to the overall detention system and establish open alternatives."
The EU Presidency knows very well that „Libya is not safe“, and the reach of UNHCR and International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Libya is limited. But the aim is to disembark the boats in Libya, another 55 Mil EUR are proposed to be allocated to the NDICI on „increasing the protection and resilience of migrants, forcibly displaced persons and host communities in Libya“ and „strengthen the EU’s third-party monitoring on Human Rights over operations in Libya, including conflict sensitivity aspects“. Third party, undependent monitoring and “increasing resilence” is a wording which may please Baerbock's, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, “feminist foreign policy“, but it is just another version of the 20-years-old plan of what was then called Transit Processing Centres.
The major part of the rest of the 12 actions mentioned, are about cooperation with IOM, and UNHCR as well as fostering „voluntary returns“. More and more humanitarian aid NGOs and actors like IOM and UNHCR are being financed and used as agents of European anti-migrant policies.
The last action has something else to offer:
“Strengthen integration of migrants in Libya by support of ongoing projects to address current challenges related to labour migration in Libya. This action is relevant as many migrants arrive in Libya as labour migrants and would remain in the country provided that the legal environment would allow an employment in the formal sector.”
Ridiculously, the EU Presidency has set a time frame for this task until Summer 2023. Despite the obvious fact that there are no immediate prospects of formal employment in Libya, and no prospects of security in the state of war the country is in. The EU paper is anticipating against all odds the political and security situation to improve in the future. This means to just ignore the people drowning in the Meditterranean despite of all the Millions of Euros spent to keep them out and away.
Since there seems to be no chance to stop the EU Council at the moment, supporting the Search and Rescue NGOs and the Civil MRCC is highly important.