The Human Rights Watch (HRW) NGO denounced the “bias of the EU against migrants,” and called upon the block to suspend cooperation with the Libyan authorities.
HRW said the EU “should implement strict human rights due diligence in its funding to third countries, until they stop sending people to places where they face abuse and inhumane detention conditions.”
It added that the “contrast between the resolution on Libya adopted this week at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s final report detailing violations and abuses in Libya is staggering. UN experts documented in the report a wide array of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Libyans, and migrants stranded in Libya. But the HRC’s feeble resolution, instead of insisting on accountability for abuses, limited itself to supporting UN capacity-building, and technical assistance to the government in Tripoli.”
Moreover, the UN report pointed out that the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard was among the main culprits committing crimes against migrants, and called on the EU to stop its support.
“The Libya resolution was drafted by the Libyan government itself. Instead of strengthening the text that Libya drafted, the EU proposed only marginal tweaks. Italy and Malta even gave their formal blessing to Libya’s toothless draft by formally co-sponsoring it,” it added.
HRW said the resolution “is a double failure for the EU. First, a failure to apply the same standards across situations of grave human rights violations, and to support accountability where international crimes are documented. Second, a failure to acknowledge the Fact-Finding Mission’s conclusion that its key partners in Libya are committing crimes against humanity. Instead, the EU took issue with findings criticizing the EU by saying its cooperation with Libya aims at strengthening migration management and respect for human rights, and acquiesced in a resolution that buried any relevant follow-up reporting process to the UN report.”
It urged the EU to “endorse and push for implementation and follow-up to the report recommendations, and that of the UN Human Rights chief. The Human Rights Council should at the next session establish an independent mechanism to monitor human rights violations in Libya. Every day the EU ignores well-documented and increasing evidence of crimes by entities it supports in Libya, it becomes even more complicit in abuses in the Mediterranean and Libya.”
