Former UN human rights official John Pace said that Malta’s use of an immigration coordination centre in Libya will ultimately fail and damage Malta’s international reputation.
Pace, who previously served as Secretary of the UN Commission on Human Rights, compared Malta’s policy to Australia’s controversial ‘Pacific Solution’, which involved sending asylum seekers to offshore processing centres.
According to Times of Malta, he noted that such approaches had already proven ineffective.
“The West, including Malta, copied the Australians on these centres, but they ignored the fact that they didn’t work,” Pace said. “Malta’s centre in Libya is not going to succeed. It will tarnish the country’s reputation and raise serious human rights concerns.”
Malta’s immigration coordination centre in Libya was launched in 2020 during a visit by then-Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. However, little is known about its operations. Unlike Australia’s Nauru centre, which processed asylum applications, Malta’s centre claims to assist in combating illegal migration in the Mediterranean.
Despite the secrecy surrounding the centre, migrant rescue groups accuse Malta of using it to coordinate pushbacks of asylum seekers back to Libya, where they often face detention and abuse.
Since Malta strengthened its migration agreements with Libya, sea arrivals have dropped significantly. According to the UNHCR, only 238 migrants reached Malta by sea in 2024—just 10% of the 2020 figures. However, human rights advocates argue that these policies fail to address the root causes of migration.
“The real issue is economic deprivation, which leads to corruption and conflict,” Pace explained. “Using Libya as a barrier is just a temporary fix—it doesn’t solve anything in the long run.”
Pace, who spent over 30 years with the UN, has a long history of investigating human rights abuses. He previously led missions in Iraq, where he exposed torture and unlawful detentions by US forces. Now, he warns that Malta’s reliance on Libya could lead to similar human rights scandals.
