The shipwreck

On 6 November 2017, at least 20 people, including two children, lost their lives in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean.

On that morning, the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (IMRCC) informed the German humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch that a dinghy was having trouble in international waters. The dinghy had left Libya a few hours earlier, carrying between 130 and 150 people.

When the crew of Sea-Watch arrived, the dinghy was sinking and dozens of migrants were already in the sea. Sea-Watch therefore started the rescue operations, while a ship of the Libyan Coast Guard, which had already reached the site, ordered the NGO to leave.

Some of the migrants managed to reach the Sea-Watch boat, while others were hauled aboard the Libyan ship. That ship had been donated to Libya by the Italian government a few months earlier, in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding signed in February 2017.

In the end, Sea-Watch managed to rescue 59 people, but 47 migrants were brought back to Libya. There, they were detained and subjected to gross human rights violations. Two people were even sold as slaves and tortured, and their families were asked to pay a ransom for their release.

The Strasbourg case

Seventeen of the shipwreck survivors - all Nigerians, including two parents of children who died during the event - have filed an application before the European Court of Human Rights against Italy.

The lawsuit accuses the Italian government of having endangered their lives by mandating Libya to carry out the rescue operations and having "indirectly pushed them back", in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The application was filed thanks to the Global Legal Action Network (Glan) and the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (Asgi), with support from the Italian non-profit ARCI and the Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic.

Their submission made use of evidence compiled by Forensic Oceanography, part of the Forensic Architecture agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, that has produced a detailed reconstruction of the incident.

The alleged violations

According to Loredana Leo, a lawyer from Asgi, Italy can be held responsible for the violation of the right to life, because all the individuals involved in the shipwreck were in a situation of potential or actual loss of life.

In addition, Italy has allegedly violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. This violation is evident in the case of the 47 migrants who were returned to Libya, which implies as well the violation of the prohibition of collective expulsions.

Leo stresses that the migrants who boarded the Libyan ship suffered severe physical violence upon arrival in Libya: the Italian authorities could not possibly be unaware that this would happen, as both international news reports and the UN have drawn attention to the situation in Libya.

Externalising human rights violations

Forensic Oceanography analysed 16 different episodes in which Italy, with the support of the European Union, coordinated and gave directions to the Libyan Coast Guard to help intercept migrants and return them to Libya.

According to Charles Heller, Forensic Oceanography’s co-founder, the shipwreck of 6 November is a prime example of the policies implemented by Italy and the European Union to entrust Libya with border control.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Libyan authorities intercepted more than 20,000 migrants in the Mediterranean in 2017 alone. They were brought back to the North African coast and held in detention centers.

According to the applicants, Italy is responsible of indirect refoulement (also referred to as refoulement "by proxy"). Not only did Italy coordinate the operations of the Libyan Coast Guard that returned migrants back to the Libyan coast, but it also provided the Libyan Coast Guard with boats and training.

Violeta Moreno-Lax, from the Global Legal Action Network, a non-profit organisation that pursues legal actions challenging states and other powerful actors involved in human rights violations, commented that Italy, with its financial and legal support, has exercised effective control over the Libyan Coast Guard. This directly attributes responsibility to the Italian government for what is happening in the Mediterranean.

Back in 2012, the Strasbourg court condemned Italy for pushing back a group of Eritrean and Somali citizens to Libya, where they were at risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.

The European Court of Human Rights must now decide whether the application filed by the survivors of the shipwreck is admissible. Giorgia Linardi, a spokesperson of Sea-Watch, said that regardless of what the court decides, the act of filing the application is in itself a very important step.