The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights accuses the EU of co-perpetrating crimes against humanity in Libya. Jake Soria from ECCHR reports migrants' situation in Libya and explains how the EU is implementing its border policy.
Frontex “has no choice,” lamented its Executive Director Hans Leijtens recently, when pressed about the agency’s role in referring migrant vessels to Libyan authorities. “I don't want people to be returned to Libya, that's the only way we can do it ...” It’s a telling statement—legally false and politically revealing. The law does not mandate cooperation with perpetrators of international crimes, it prohibits it.
The EU’s migration regime depends on precisely that collaboration. Behind the language of legality lies a policy of containment: outsourcing violence to Libyan actors. This is not a consequence, but a feature of European border control. Framed as a necessity, the EU’s containment model echoes colonial logics of control and exclusion, redrawn along maritime borders. Like those historical systems, it operates through racialized hierarchies of who is permitted to move, live, and be protected.
Libya has long been a transit point for people on the move toward Europe. After Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, as Libya descended into conflict, a brutal economy of detention emerged—one in which armed groups and state actors sought to profit from the capture and detention of people on the move. European actors seized on this instability to externalize their borders across the Mediterranean.
The horrific conditions people on the move in Libya face are no secret. It has been extensively documented by the UN, human rights organizations, and media outlets. Arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, and enslavement are widespread and systematic. European actors have done little to protect the rights of people on the move in Libya. Instead, they have deepened their collaboration with Libyan actors.
At ECCHR – a non-profit international human rights organization which has been tracking crimes against people on the move in Libya for many years, including filing Communications to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2021 and 2022 - we see the EU’s containment model as a deliberate strategy of funding, training, equipping, and cooperating with local security forces to intercept, return, and detain people on the move in Libya. The logic behind this strategy is clear: to prevent arrivals in Europe, no matter the human costs.
But this model is not inevitable; it is a choice that violates international legal obligations. EU leaders must end their reliance on this model or face criminal accountability, including prosecutions at the ICC.
The Containment Model in Libya
The containment model is a plan between European actors and other states. In Libya, the model is formalized through agreements between Libya and EU Member States, namely Italy and Malta. At first glance, these agreements appear humanitarian, with the declared goals of curbing “illegal” migration, combating human trafficking or saving lives at sea. A closer look reveals something else entirely: European contributions to Libyan actors directly enable grave human rights violations and international crimes against people on the move.
Between 2015 and 2022, the EU provided Libya over 700 million euros under the banner of migration management. The EU and its Member States also provided Libyan actors with equipment, trainings and communication infrastructure. Frontex has shared the coordinates of boats in distress, ensuring that Libyan forces intercept and return them to Libya.
The main beneficiary is the so-called Libyan Coast Guard (scLCG). The use of “so-called” is intentional, as the scLCG operates not as a civilian maritime authority but as a loosely formalized network of militarized actors embedded in Libya’s conflict economy. The EU supported the establishment of the Libyan Search and Rescue (SAR) zone and the scLCG, tasked with the jurisdiction to conduct search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. The scLCG engages in dangerous practices, including ramming boats, beating people on the move with whips, or shooting them at sea. Though an Italian Court ruled that the scLCG cannot be considered a legitimate SAR operator due to routine violations of international law, European actors continue to cooperate with it.
Beyond the scLCG, European actors, including Frontex and Maltese authorities, have provided coordinates of migrants' vessels to the Tareq Bin Zeyad Brigade (TBZ), a militia aligned with Khalifa Haftar, the de facto ruler of eastern Libya, to prevent migrants from reaching Europe. Amnesty International has accused the TBZ of a “catalogue of horrors”, including war crimes and other international crimes.
Regardless of their captor, people on the move intercepted at sea are invariably returned to Libya, where they face certainty of detention. Inside Libya’s detention industry, survivors describe inhuman and degrading conditions, such as overcrowding and the lack of access to food, water or medicine. Those detained in Libya have also described near daily violence, including rape, beatings and torture. Many are subjected to enslavement, namely being subject to sexual slavery, forced labor and/or forced participation in armed conflicts between Libyan armed groups. One survivor recounted being told, “Whoever came here to us is a slave and we will decide his or her fate.” These conditions are not merely human rights violations, but amount to crimes against humanity.
David Yambio, a human rights defender and survivor of the containment model in Libya, described it best “Europe does not carry out the torture itself. That would be too messy, too direct. It pays others to do it. Through deals. Through ‘partnerships.’ Through millions sent to those who run prisons that have no name ...” He elaborates, “... This suffering is not accidental. It is engineered. Designed to discourage others from coming.”
International law is clear: actors that knowingly cooperate with perpetrators of widespread and systematic violations share responsibility for those crimes. European actors’ continued collaboration with actors like the scLCG and TBZ, not only violates the international legal principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning people to places where they face serious harm but also amounts to co-perpetration crimes against humanity. Thus, the choice is clear: stop cooperation with Libyan actors and end the containment model.
The Spread of the Containment Model
European leaders have praised the “success” of the containment model that resulted in less people reaching Europe. That’s why European leaders continue to push for continued cooperation. In 2024, Maltese Prime Minister Abela stated, “Unless we support Libya with tangible actions and full backing, the problem will end up on the shores of the European Union.”
More troubling, the Containment Model is spreading. Utilizing the experience in Libya as a blueprint, European actors have signed similar agreements with security services across North Africa. These agreements have already resulted in similar patterns of violence towards people on the move. Following the same playbook as in Libya, European actors recently recognized a Tunisian Search and Rescue (SAR) zone, allowing Tunisian maritime actors to intercept people at sea and forcibly return them to Tunisia. Since then, Tunisian security forces have utilized European funding and equipment to deport people on the move, systematically dumping them in desert regions. “Desert dumps” have resulted in people dying after being abandoned in the desert or being taken by Libyan armed groups, where they find themselves entrapped in the “detention industry”.
Paths to Justice
The ICC presents an avenue for justice. The ICC has an open investigation in Libya, including international crimes committed against migrants and refugees. However, European actors are trying to thwart the investigation. This is exemplified by the case of Osama Elmasry Njeem, a Libyan national subject to an open arrest warrant by the ICC for suspected war crimes, including torture, murder, enslavement and rape at the Mitiga detention center in Tripoli. Elmasry was detained in Italy, but subsequently released and flown back to Libya on an Italian state aircraft, reportedly following high-level political interference, rather than being surrendered to the ICC.
A blow to international justice efforts, the incident underscores the need for the ICC to investigate the connections between Libyan actors and European authorities. An ICC investigation into European actors would serve as a powerful tool in ending the containment model, forcing the EU to stop using crimes against humanity as migration policy.
