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INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND EUROPE
preventing migrant movements (para 250). Ihe UN Libya Sanctions Committee
issued a report in June 2017 stating that the beneficiaries (apparently including
the LYCG) of EU training did not come within the scope of the exceptions to the
arms embargo which the UN had placed on the country (para 253).
1he situation in Libya for migrants was appalling and had been the subject of
many reports by UN bodies, most importantly UNHCR.” Even EU and Member
State officials acknowledged that the conditions in Libyan detention centres for
migrants were appalling including executions, torture and systematic human
rights abuses (para 259). By collaborating and empowering the LYCG to stop
boats leaving Libya and taking back to Libya those who had managed to depart,
the EU and Member State authorities participated in the return of these migrants
to these detention centres. The torture and human rights abuses of these migrants,
according to the communication, was the direct result of the actions of the EU
and Member State authorities. Not only were they the consequence of the EU and
Member States actions, but the officials responsible for the policy knew what the
consequences were and proceeded, nonetheless, to implement the policy.
Among the most original parts of the research carried out for the communication
is the evidence that the LYCG is itself involved in the smuggling, detention and
trafficking of human beings (para 1001). In the absence of an effective national
authority in Libya, the LYCG has no effective supervision. With very considerable
funding from EU and Member State sources, it is also fairly autonomous from
the recognised Libyan state. The LYCG relations with the networks of smugglers
and traffickers are revealed as close. The solution for the LYCG of what to do with
migrants that the European authorities wanted them to take back was to hand them
over to these networks which are also heavily infiltrated in the detention camps
(paras 974 et seq). The communication goes very carefully through the elements of
the offence of crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the ICC.” It is
not the point of this chapter to examine each of the elements. Rather it is to chart
how this communication came about as the direct result of the political choice of
EU leaders to pursue a policy of finding and punishing smugglers and traffickers
of human beings as a way to end the irregular entry of asylum seekers (and other
migrants) into the EU. The focus on the ill of irregular migration (and behind that
term also the irregular arrival of refugees into the EU) and the need to address it is
completely out of proportion to the size of the issue (according to Frontex there were
fewer than 142,000 irregular border crossings into the EU in 2019 in comparison
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Position on Returns to Libya ¬
Update II, September 2018, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5b8d02314.html.
20 UN General Assembly, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (last amended
2010), 17 July 1998, ISBN No. 92-9227-227-6, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3a84.
html.
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