Number of refugees and migrants sent back to Libya under EU policy exceeds 100,000

The number of refugees and migrants forced back to Libya from the central Mediterranean Sea since the EU began to support the interceptions of people trying to reach Europe has passed 100,000, according to analysis by The Irish Times.

The full total comes to at least 101,909, as of last Saturday, according to publicly reported figures and the numbers compiled by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

These include 32,425 people intercepted at sea last year, and 14,157 so far this year. Of those caught this year, 848 were women and at least 505 were children. In the week of August 21-27th alone, 1,216 people were caught.

At least 19,811 more people have drowned or disappeared in the central Mediterranean Sea since 2014, including 981 this year, according to IOM’s figures.

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In 2017, the EU began supporting the Libyan coastguard to intercept men, women and children who were trying to reach Europe. Many have been returned to indefinite detention, in centres where cases of torture, rape, forced labour, starvation, deaths from medical neglect, and other kinds of abuse have been widely documented. Others have disappeared.

On Tuesday, IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli tweeted saying that just 2,000 people are being held in official migrant detention centres, meaning “the majority [of people intercepted this year] are unaccounted for.”

In October 2021, a UN appointed fact-finding mission found evidence that crimes against humanity are taking place against refugees and migrants in Libya. Follow-up reports referenced evidence of co-operation between smugglers, traffickers, and Libyan officials. They also said detained migrant women had told the mission’s experts that they had sex with Libyan guards in exchange for food or water. “The Mission received regular reports of enslavement of migrants. In this regard, there is ample evidence that migrants are treated like commodities in various ways by their captors,” one report read.

In April this year, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, told the UN Security Council said that his office had made a preliminary assessment that crimes against refugees and migrants in Libya may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes. These included “arbitrary detention, unlawful killing, enforced disappearance, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, abduction for ransom, extortion, and forced labour”.

The EU Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

Heavy fighting broke out in Libyan capital Tripoli last weekend, with at least 32 civilians killed and 150 injured in the first day of clashes. The conflict is between forces with loyalty to rival Libyan governments: the UN-backed Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and the eastern Tobruk-based House of Representatives.

According to the International Rescue Committee, an unknown number of refugees and migrants fled from a detention centre inside the affected area.