by Alice Fill and Francesco Moresco
The Assisted Voluntary Returns (AVR) system has in recent years been the focus of increasing interest from EU Member States. Since 2016 there has been a wide dissemination of voluntary return and reintegration programmes in Africa, implemented by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and financed both by the European Union through the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTFA), and by EU Member States – such as Italy – through the so called Africa Fund.
IOM’s role in voluntary returns
The EU–IOM Joint Initiative for the Protection and Reintegration of Migrants is a clear example of the large-scale development of return operations from transit countries, covering more than 26 African countries in the Sahel and Lake Chad region, the Horn of Africa and North Africa – including Libya. Assisted voluntary returns have indeed been promoted as the best option for a well-managed migration policy within the continent based on the unproven presumption of being a deterrent to irregular migration – without any consideration of the broader dynamics of migration and movement in different areas.
Assisted Voluntary Return programmes have been the main activity of the IOM since its creation. According to the IOM definition, Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes provide a dignified return home, promoting the sustainable reintegration of migrants who are unable or unwilling to remain in their host countries and wish to return voluntarily to their countries of origin.
Complementary to a clear strategy of border externalisation, the IOM’s action has received considerable support in Libya: following the dramatic drop in departures to Europe achieved through very critical cooperation agreements –the most striking example being perhaps the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding concluded between Italy and Libya – the country has now become an open-air prison, constantly exposed to the risk of a humanitarian crisis.
According to the IOM, some 663,000 migrants were present on Libyan soil in 2019, while as of April 2020 the UNHCR recorded 48,732 refugees and asylum seekers without any form of protection in the country. Thus, there emerges an urgency to relieve the migratory pressure on Libya and attempt to mitigate the humanitarian crisis also through evacuation programmes for foreign nationals, such as voluntary return to their countries of origin.
The rhetoric of voluntary return is even stronger in the sensitive context of Libya, where the IOM’s AVR procedures are defined by the organisation itself as ‘Voluntary Humanitarian Repatriation’ (VHR) and carried out within the framework of the organisation’s activities in the country.
Voluntary return programmes from Libya are targeted at vulnerable migrants detained in detention centres, rescued at sea or stranded in Libyan urban areas and are implemented in coordination with the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM) and the Libyan Coast Guard. Concretely speaking, as indicated in a document published on the IOM’s website under the title “Framework for Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration”, when providing day-to-day assistance to migrants the Organisation should inform possible beneficiaries that they have the possibility to access AVR/VHR programmes without incurring costs or administrative tasks.
Counselling would then be carried out (jointly with the UNHCR, in case the IOM considers these migrants as potential refugees), followed by an individual assessment of the beneficiaries’ vulnerability profiles and the specific risks of their returning to their countries of origin.
The main critical issues
Voluntary returns from Libya, however, have obvious criticalities – both general and related to the specific context of Libya – which may vitiate some of their fundamental components, first and foremost the voluntariness of the return.
First, the Libyan situation raises doubts about the IOM’s ability to adequately screen for return risks. This applies in particular to the condition of detention centres run by the Libyan Ministry of Interior, where generalised and indefinite detention is based solely on migrant status. This is compounded by serious and systematic violations of basic human rights perpetrated in a context of total arbitrariness of detention and treatment. The lack of access to food and sanitary products, often linked to conditions of overcrowding, malnutrition and the spread of diseases, causes very serious physical and psychological prostration. In addition, these centres are very often located in areas affected by ongoing armed conflict, thus exposing detained persons to an additional risk.
Secondly, the substantial inability of the authorities to manage the migration phenomenon – besides being openly acknowledged by the IOM – is made even more evident by the fact that most of the official centres are controlled by militias. Furthermore, the report of the UN Support Mission in Libya showed a direct involvement of Libyan government bodies in systematic human rights violations, torture and trafficking. Finally, in this context, the genuineness of the consent to repatriation seems doubtful, especially where – in the absence of alternatives to detention – the AVR becomes the only effective possibility to escape daily abuses and a situation of unprecedented violence. This perplexity is in line with UNHCR’s “Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation“ , which states that repatriation can be considered voluntary only when a person has the right to remain in the host country, is free from detention and their rights are fully respected.
The UN Delegation for Libya itself also pointed out that the decision to return under the AVR schemes may not be entirely voluntary and may have been taken under duress. Especially in
cases of increased vulnerability, consent to return – which is difficult to prove, especially with regard to case-by-case risk assessment – could therefore expose to further persecution and to the possibility of being returned to an unsafe country.
As described above, the activation of AVRs in Libya is therefore part of a broader strategy of externalisation sponsored by EU countries and aimed at limiting as much as possible the access of third country nationals to the territory of the Union. Italy’s “indirect” participation in the IOM’s plan –in the form of financial support – is likely to raise a number of doubts about the State’s responsibilities for failing to protect the interests of migrants as a result of the implementation of return operations.
ASGI initiatives
ASGI has decided to promote a series of strategic actions aimed at verifying the legitimacy of repatriation projects and the use of Italian public funds to support them. Specifically, the association has attempted to assess the legitimacy of the Italian State’s initiative to support the programme “Comprehensive and Multi Sectorial Action Plan in Response to the Migration Crisis in Libya”, financed by the so-called “Africa Fund” and formalised in a bilateral agreement between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) and the IOM on 4 August 2017. In particular, 10 million out of a total budget of 18 million euros were allocated to the subprogramme “Humanitarian return and reintegration of vulnerable and stranded migrants out of Libya“. Approximately two years later, a further €2 million funding was earmarked for the continuation of the plan, with the MoU of 27 May 2019.
On the basis of the minimal information contained in these ministerial agreements, ASGI has submitted since January 2019 a series of FOI requests to the Directorate-General for Italians Abroad and Migration Policies of MAECI. These requests are aimed at reconstructing the overall progress of the IOM’s plan in Libya, with particular regard to the number of persons and countries involved in the repatriation programme and the measures adopted to protect vulnerable persons such as minors, asylum seekers and victims of trafficking. In addition, information has been requested on the actual reporting of expenses incurred by the IOM in the implementation of the plan and the resulting level of involvement of the Ministry in the examination of the various operations, including economic ones, in which the plan itself is divided.
Information obtained through those FOI requests has clearly revealed that there have been a number of cases of negligence in monitoring proper use of the allocated funds. First of all, the Ministry declared several times that it did not have any specific information or documents on measures adopted within the plan to safeguard various fundamental interests of migrants. In particular, there is no reference to formal procedures for the identification and protection of personal data of those involved or to the modalities of risk assessment of repatriation and refoulement or, finally, to the forms of assistance actually provided to vulnerable persons in order to ensure their genuine consent. Of the more than 8,000 persons assisted in the plan between 2017 and 2019, it is unknown to the Ministry how many were potential or actual victims of trafficking.
If the scarce data provided by the Ministry already point to obvious problems in terms of fundamental rights involved in the IOM’s plan, what emerges from the various FOI requests is, above all, a very serious lack of information held by MAECI itself on the methods of implementation of AVRs in Libya, an element that can indicate a very serious negligence on the part of the Ministry in terms of monitoring and controlling the use of public funding.
Starting from these considerations, two different appeals have been presented before the Italian Administrative Tribunal, promoted respectively by ASGI (together with the association Spazi circolari) and by the association Differenza Donna in January 2020. The first appeal focuses on MAECI’s negligence in assessing the risk of refoulement of migrants involved in AVRs in Libya. This risk is evident since several repatriation operations to countries such as Eritrea and Somalia conducted by the IOM since 2017 have affected citizens with high recognition rates for international protection in Europe. With respect to these specific initiatives, it is also not clear how the risk of persecution of migrants in their countries of origin has been concretely assessed and what the extent of the UNHCR’s involvement in this process is.
The second appeal focused, instead, on the absence of guarantees about the presence of suitable tools to identify potential victims of trafficking requested of the IOM by the Ministry. As already pointed out, the genuine provision of consent by vulnerable victims is a central issue in the context of AVRs: it is therefore surprising that there are no data on the number of trafficking victims involved in such operations or no specific operational protocols for the identification of victims before a return decision is made. Moreover, many doubts as to the safety of the returns themselves are raised by the fact that Nigeria is the main destination of return operations sponsored by the IOM (25% of the total). As recently underlined in the latest EASO country reports, Nigeria is the main place of origin of victims of trafficking from Africa to Europe who are at a very high risk of stigmatisation, social exclusion and re-trafficking if they are returned to their country.
In conclusion, regardless of the outcome of these appeals, they are essential tools for demonstrating the Italian State’s responsibility for serious violations that may potentially arise during the implementation of voluntary repatriation schemes from Libya. The aim of these actions is also to broaden the reflection on the controversial role of international organisations in Libya and the harmful effects of externalisation policies, in an attempt to revive the public debate on these critical issues.
Photo credit: Luciano Massimi
