The EU has given tens of millions of euros to enforce border control and boost the Nigerien police which was tasked with stopping migrants trying to cross into Libya. In April, the EU also pledged 90 million euro ($107m) for "improved migration management" in Libya.
The Italian government gave the Libyan Coast Guard new boats and millions of euros to support their operations. It has done so disregarding accusations that its forces are rounding up migrants and refugees and sending them to prisons, with widespread abuses at all stages.
One Libyan coast guard commander even told Human Rights Watch in April that the use of force against migrants was "necessary to control the situation as you cannot communicate with them". In May 2017, volunteer rescuers reported that the Libyan Coast Guard opened fire during a refugee "rescue" operation in international waters.
The support for the Libyan Coastal Guard and its violent ways has somewhat curbed the number of boats attempting the trip across the Mediterranean. But that has meant that there are more people now in Libya who are at risk of exploitation, torture and slavery at the hands of smugglers or armed groups.
The United Nations has condemned the EU helping the Libyan authorities detain migrants and has described its actions as "inhuman". UN monitors visited some of the detention centres in Libya and were "shocked" by what they saw. They found "thousands of emaciated and traumatized men, women and children piled on top of each other, locked up in hangars with no access to the most basic necessities, and stripped of their human dignity"; they found out that beatings and rape were commonplace.
At the same time, NGOs are being forced to abandon what they view as their moral obligations, with devastating consequences. The Italian government made NGOs involved in search and rescue operations sign a "code of conduct" not to enter Libyan territorial waters and not to obstruct Libyan Coast Guard's operations. The EU has engaged in smear campaigns against NGOs conducting search and rescue operations, accusing them of "unintentionally helping" smugglers while providing no evidence for that claim.
As the EU continues to pour millions of its taxpayers' money into security policies violating human rights transit countries, the death rate of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean continues to increase.
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