Since November 2017, and the CNN ‘slave auction’ scandal, more than 1000 migrants have been, in the words of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [1], ‘evacuated’ out of Libya. Of these figures 770 have been sent to Niger, whereas 312 were sent to Italy. On 15th February 2018, Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR’s special envoy for the Central Mediterranean, praised the response [2] stating:
“These evacuations are the best example of the impact that international solidarity can have on refugees themselves; however, much more needs to be done.”
The UNHCR intends to move thousands more migrants stranded in Libya over the coming months. This is in line with the joint European Union (UN)-African Union (AU)- United Nations (UN) Task Force established during the EU-AU November 2017 Summit to accelerate both the operations of the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
During this Summit, the EU published a joint statement [3] with the AU that indicated the need to “facilitate…voluntary repatriation [of refugees in Libya] to their countries of origin”. In the sense of pure numbers, the implementation of the November 2017 Task Force and of ‘voluntary repatriation’ has been successful so far. But as for the well-being of migrants still suffering human rights abuses within Libya, the EU policy still misses the mark. And in the aftermath of the 2018 Italian elections, with the rise of anti-immigrant parties in the EU’s frontier with Libya, further questions remain regarding future EU strategy and cohesiveness.
Why is the EU strategy flawed? Here it is identified the double-layered nature of EU policy: the cosmetic layer concerned with the well-being of migrants, and the real layer concerned with protecting its borders and containing migrants in Libya and countries of origin [4].