The Italy-Libya agreements: controversial cooperation assessing the human rights violations on matters of refugees and migrants protection

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, Italy has become one of the main destination countries for migration in Europe, reaching the peak of arrivals during the breakout of the 2011 Arab Spring in several North African countries. The majority of migrants disembarking on the Italian shore come from Sub-Saharan and Middle Eastern countries, forcing those people to transit through Libya in order to undertake the dangerous sea journey on the Central Mediterranean route. Starting from the early 2000s, the Italian state has invested financial and technical resources in strengthening bilateral cooperation with Libya as a way to counter migration, by employing outsourcing border control mechanisms to Libya. Although several reports have been released over the years by well-known NGOs documenting the degrading, cruel and inhumane treatment to which migrants and refugees are subjected both in Search and Rescue operations and in the Libya detention centers, Italy has still been pursuing cooperation with the Great Jamahiriya. In this framework, it will be attempted to prove how Italy could be held legally responsible for the human rights violations happening in the Libyan jurisdiction due to the extensive technical and financial indirect support that the Italian state has been provided over the years for intercepting and returning migrants to an unsafe country