Sir, – Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland welcomes the Government statement during Tuesday’s Dáil debate on the motion to deploy an Irish naval asset to the Mediterranean as part of Operation Irini that “at no point in the deployment will the mission involve the training of the Libyan Coast Guard”.
It is important this assurance is followed through on, both for Ireland’s standing on human rights and to signal to other European countries who are playing a role in Irini the significant humanitarian concerns relating to the Libyan Coast Guard.
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is concerned that any capacity building and training of the Libyan Coast Guard as part of Operation Irini will ultimately lead to the return of migrants to Libya in breach of the non-refoulement principle (the guarantee that no one should be forcedly returned to where they would face torture or other cruel and degrading treatment).
Through our search and rescue operations at sea and our provision of medical assistance in Libya, MSF teams have witnessed first-hand the detrimental effects of the system of interceptions and returns of migrants to Libya and the shocking treatment of migrants and flagrant breaches of their human rights.
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The recently published report of the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya supports our direct experience that migrants, many of whom are forcibly returned to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard, face grave human rights abuses. It notes “overwhelming evidence” that migrants have been systematically tortured and found “reasonable grounds to believe that migrants across Libya are victims of crimes against humanity”.
Ireland’s previous naval deployments to the Mediterranean played a vital role in saving many lives at sea. We now need a proactive state-led mechanism to coordinate dedicated search and rescue activities to assist refugees and migrants in the Central Mediterranean, where over 20,000 people have died or gone missing since 2014. – Yours, etc,
ISABEL SIMPSON,
Executive Director,
Médecins Sans
Frontières Ireland,
Dublin 4.