▲Transfer of immigrants arriving from North Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa [Vito Manzani].
ANALYSIS / Valeria Nadal [English version].
In late 2017, Cable News Network (CNN) released a video recorded anonymously with a hidden camera showing the sale of four men in Libya, for $400 each. It was an example of selling slaves to Libyan nationals for work or in exchange for ransom, in the case of men, or as sex slaves, in the case of women. The shocking images triggered a global response; several Hollywood celebrities joined the protests calling for an end to the slave trade in Libya. France, Germany, Chad, Nigeria and other countries have urged Libya to address this serious problem through a repatriation program for migrants and the evacuation of detention camps, where many of the slave mafias operate. Circumstances, however, do not appear to have improved since the video was released, mainly because there continues to be a lack of state coordination to address the problem, along with other factors. How is it possible that a slave trade could have occurred inside Libya?
Libya is a large country located in North Africa, with a long Mediterranean coastline. Until 2011, when the Arab Spring broke out, Libya was one of the most stable countries in the region. It had one of the highest life expectancies in all of Africa, and a educational system - from Education primary to university - better than most neighboring countries. However, this status of stability and relative prosperity came to an end in February 2011, when the uprisings that began in Tunisia, and had spread to countries such as Yemen, Jordan and Egypt, reached Libya.
Unlike other states in the region, which were able to peacefully resolve the demands of the protesters, the immediate threat of civil war in Libya forced an international intervention to resolve the conflict. The United States (US) and the European Union (EU), with the support of the United Nations (UN), acted against the dictatorial regime of Muammar Gaddafi. With the capture and killing of Qaddafi by rebel troops, the war seemed to be over. However, in the absence of a viable plan for a political transition, status deteriorated further as various political actors attempted to fill the power vacuum left by Qaddafi's demise.
Today, Libya continues to experience severe political instability and is considered a failed state. Although there is a government promoted and recognized by the UN, the Government of National Unity (GNU), it does not control the entire country and is challenged by various power groups, many of which are armed militias. Due to this lack of governmental authority, as well as its strategic location on the Mediterranean coast, Libya has become a base of operations for mafias, which take advantage of the willingness of refugees and migrants to reach Europe via the Libyan land route. The open borders policy launched by the EU in 2015 has not helped curb their activities, as it has facilitated the establishment of human smuggling routes. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that at least 400,000 people are currently in Libyan detention centers, where migrants are an easy goal for the slave trade. The GUN has opened a formal research and has met with European and African leaders to enable emergency repatriation of refugees and migrants. However, the effectiveness of the Libyan authorities' efforts is limited. A more important issue, however, is the role that the international community can play in alleviating the problem, of which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been voices core topic at discussion.
Testimonials
Since 2015, Oxfam has reported extensively to the international community on the migration crisis in Libya, and has emphasized the need for European countries to seek and find a solution for the thousands of men, women and children suffering from this status. Documented cases of slave trade in Libya, carried out by smugglers and militias, have made the search for a solution even more urgent.
In the wake of this alarming status in Libya, on August 9, 2017, Oxfam published a bulletin graduate "You are no longer human", in which it analyzed the facts of the status in Libya and blamed European countries for their "misguided policies aimed at preventing people from reaching Italy". To develop this report, Oxfam spoke "with men and women who have spent months being beaten, tied up like animals and sold as cheap labor in Libya's scandalous slave trade," and drew on the "...anguished testimonies of migrants who spent time in Libya before escaping to Italy."
The testimonies recount shocking scenes of sexual violence, torture and slave work ; they also recount cases of people who have been held captive because of the impossibility of paying the price demanded by the smugglers. The latter happened to Peter, an 18-year-old Nigerian: "Once we arrived in Sabah, in Libya, they took me to the 'Ghetto' (...) They gave us a phone to call our families and ask them for money. If you could not pay the 1,500 Libyan dinars [about 100 euros], you were held captive and beaten."
After hearing these testimonies, Oxfam has concluded that European policies must take into account the experiences of people forced to flee their homes, as the information they provide sample clearly shows that "Libya remains a country marked by systematic human rights abuses and (...) the EU's attempt to ensure that people cannot leave Libya only puts more men, women and children at risk of abuse and exploitation."
Some of the solutions Oxfam has proposed include promoting humanitarian search and rescue operations, increasing the issue of immigration applications that are accepted for processing, creating safe routes to Europe, and ending the policy that prevents migrants from leaving Libya.
Open, close borders
Another international agency that has actively denounced the inhumane status in Libya is Amnesty International. According to the data of this organization, the world is facing one of the most serious cases of slavery in the 21st century. Refugees and migrants arriving on Libyan territory are detained and tortured in detention centers before being sold into slavery. Those who manage to escape such horrible conditions do not necessarily end up in better circumstances: at least 3,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
Being one of the most active organizations regarding the status in Libya, Amnesty International has order EU member states to stop closing their borders to refugees and migrants from Libya. It argues that this European policy only encourages and fuels violence and extortion on Libyan territory, making the EU complicit in this crisis.
Amnesty International recalls that, since the end of 2016, the closure of European borders has favored an increase in control by the Libyan Anti-Immigration department , which now oversees detention centers where refugees and migrants are not only arbitrarily and indefinitely detained, but also often sold as slaves. Moreover, according to the organization, the European inability or unwillingness to act, mistakenly believing that what happens outside European borders has no consequences for the EU's internal affairs, has allowed the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept people at sea. Instead of reaching the "promised land", migrants are forcibly taken back to Libya, where they are locked up and mistreated again in detention centers. All this is favored by the agreements reached by the EU and the local Libyan authorities, backed by armed groups, regarding the control of migratory flows to Europe.
International coordination
On December 7, 2017, the UN Securitycommittee held an emergency session to take action regarding the status slave trade in Libya. This status was described as an "abuse of Human Rights that may also constitute crimes against humanity", in which case the Libyan authorities and all member states of the organization should act from agreement with the International Public Law by bringing those responsible before the International Criminal Court (ICC). In addition, the UN pointed out at that session the Libyan authorities as one of the main actors complicit in the growing phenomenon of slave trafficking, due to their ineffectiveness in investigating it and administering justice. The organization has also placed particular emphasis on the need for the Libyan government to secure its borders and for its actions to be supported by various international instruments, so that human trafficking can be effectively countered. The UN has also encouraged cooperation with the EU and the African Union (AU) to ensure the protection of refugees and migrants, on the premise that success will only be achieved if all actors involved work together.
Meanwhile, the UN is already operating in the territory through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has helped 13,000 people to leave detention centers in Libya, and another 8,000 from those in Niger. But IOM's efforts do not end in Libya. Once refugees and migrants are safe, the organization stores their information and testimonies and offers them the chance to return home, ensuring IOM's attendance in the process.
Despite attempts to unify the efforts of all organizations active on the ground, the reality is that the UN today does not have a plan of action that includes all parties to end slavery in Libya and seek a common solution. According to reports from this organization, slavery in Libya could end by 2030, after 20 years of test and error. However, it is not surprising that most NGOs have no action plans.
NGO solutions
NGOs play an important role in helping to alleviate the humanitarian problems caused by migration; however, the solutions they suggest often do not take into account the complex political realities that make reaching those solutions, if not totally impossible, at least challenging. As result, many of the proposals offered by human rights agencies such as Oxfam and Amnesty International are too broad to be of any use internship. The migration crisis, which reached its peak in the summer of 2015 with the effective invitation by several European nations for refugees to migrate to Europe-coupled with the relaxation of Dublin regulations and the opening of borders within the EU-paradoxically helped to exacerbate the problem. These measures provided an incentive for mass migration of people who did not fall into the "refugee" category, encouraging risk-taking among migrants on the premise that borders would remain open and all would be welcome.
The result has not only been the rapid backtracking on this policy by a number of countries that initially supported it, such as Austria, but also a dramatic internal and diplomatic conflict within the EU between countries that are against mass migration to the territory of the Union. The crisis also shed light on the inability of the existing laws of both the EU and its member states to find solutions to the migration problem. Thus, the policy of open borders as a solution to the problem may be well intentioned, but ineffective in providing a balanced solution to the problem.
Similarly, ensuring safe passage for migrants back to their home country is based on the assumption that there is an actual functioning government in Libya with which such efforts can be coordinated; however, no such entity exists as of yet. While the GUN has a limited amount of control over certain swathes of territory, the problem remains that in other parts of Libya this government does not exercise any control. While assisting (limited) migration and/or repatriation and securing land and sea borders could be a first step in stemming the flow, the fact remains that political instability in Libya - as well as in other nations - is what breeds smuggling networks, one of which is the slave trade.
Therefore, the European policy of helping more people by relaxing borders hardly solves the problem. At its height, the migration crisis saw hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing open borders in Europe, with no realistic plan to deal with the numbers. In addition, it seems that the international press is reporting less aggressively on the various difficulties migrants face within their new host states as result of a utopian policy in which the sky is the limit for immigration. More importantly, the open-door policy for immigration - pushed by a number of humanitarian organizations - has also led to the proliferation of smuggling networks within Europe that have required the establishment of new work forces to deal with them, although the result of this measure could be worse as increased control may lead to the emergence of new routes and access points. Nearly 90% of migrants arriving in Europe are facilitated by the multinational smuggling business. The point is that illegal activities thrive as result of failed policies and the inability to find determined political solutions to the migration crisis: a necessary ingredient for successful practical measures.
The primary role of the states
The lack of government control over territory in Libya, characteristic of a failed state, has made possible the proliferation of illegal and highly humiliating activities against human dignity, such as the slave trade. Images such as the one on CNN, which provided evidence of people being sold into slavery in detention centers, have raised international awareness of the problem. Numerous organizations, led by the UN, have stepped up their work in recent months to try to put an end to such a disastrous status . These efforts have achieved some results, however, there is no meaningful method to improve them because they are not coordinated at the state level, and the large-scale cooperation required by all parties involved is unlikely to be possible.
Moreover, the effects of the migration crisis are not unique to Libya or Africa, and have manifested themselves in Europe as well. Although human trafficking, both in the slave trade and for other purposes, occurs on a much larger (and quite alarming) scale in the African theater, the phenomenon has similarly affected Europe as result of its failed - or non-existent - plan of action to manage immigration, both internally and externally. The solution is necessarily political, and the reality is that, however well-intentioned and necessary, the independent, rights-based solutions advocated by NGOs will not be decisive in solving the problem. Only states, working together with various NGOs, can put an end to this misery through well thought out and coordinated solutions. And the sad reality is that not everyone can necessarily be saved in the process, nor will all migrants be able to obtain their "European dream".
