On the morning of October 25, the organization Alarm Phone, which is dedicated to helping migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, was warned that two boats with more than 1,300 people on board left the coast of Tobruk, in eastern Libya, and drifted into the search and rescue zone of Italy and Malta. By noon their situation had become almost untenable, with about 12 dead or unconscious. But Italian authorities did not mount a rescue operation until more than 15 hours after news of the sinking; one of the largest that Alarm Phone has participated in in its eight years of existence. Many of these two boats came from Egypt, an increasingly common occurrence on the perilous route through the Central Mediterranean.
By November of that year, more than 18,000 Egyptians had arrived in Italy by sea, making them the first national among those entering the European country by that route. According to a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number represents an increase of more than 220% compared to the same period last year.
Faced with this increase in arrivals, on October 30, Brussels and Cairo They announced a project Strengthen the operational capabilities of the Egyptian Coast Guard and Border Guard. According to an EU spokeswoman, the plan has a budget of €80 million and will be implemented in two phases. The first, worth €23 million, will cover the supply of search and rescue vessels and civil border surveillance equipment this year. The second, which is under negotiation, is scheduled for 2023. It is the first cooperation of this type between the European Commission and Egypt.
After a boat with hundreds of people on board sank off the coast of Egypt in 2016, killing more than 200 people, Cairo began using its characteristic heavy hand to prevent anyone from leaving its territory. At the same time, the country has also consolidated as a major player in the externalization of borders that the EU and its Member States have introduced in recent years, especially with the countries of the Southern Mediterranean.
Although the reasons for the sharp increase in departures from Egypt vary from case to case, a researcher from the Platform for Refugees in Egypt (RPE) under the condition of anonymity points to the poor state of the national economy and, above all, the stagnation of the country with the ensuing lack of hope and prospects for a dignified future are two of the main reasons.
ambiguity
Human rights groups and MEPs have expressed concern about Brussels’ new program due to its unclear funding plan and history of abuses by Egyptian authorities. “We still don’t know what the impact of this new agreement will be, but we could already see what the previous ones caused, which was a large number of non-compliances that were not investigated and carried out without accountability,” says a source from RPE.
Some of these organizations warn that the lack of criticism from Brussels and the increasing cooperation with Cairo are fueling persistent violations of rights across borders and within the country. Groups such as RPE point out that despite some legislative changes, Egyptian authorities continue to enforce a 2014 presidential decree that defines large areas bordering Egypt’s borders as military zones.
“They are a black hole, like prisons. No one is allowed to know what is going on there: NGOs are not allowed to enter the country, there is no national or international surveillance and no reports can be prepared,” warns a second source for the RPE, who declined to reveal his identity for security reasons. 🇧🇷 Between 2016 and mid-2021, the Egyptian military announced the detention of more than 80,000 irregular migrants without ever clarifying what had happened to them, as documented by the RPE Egypt recently deported dozens of Eritrean refugees who got lost on their way And in 2021, after obtaining hundreds of classified documents, the French newspaper Disclose revealed a covert operation by the Egyptian military in the country’s western desert targeting smuggling routes and irregular migration under the pretext of counter-terrorism. also the arbitrary detention of migrants in various cities across the country.
EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Policy Olivér Várhelyi, appointed in 2019 on behalf of ultra-conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said in August that a risk assessment would be carried out with Egypt ahead of the new programme. And both he and the aforementioned Commission spokesperson ensure that the use of the equipment and the implementation of the plan are monitored so that the rights of migrants and refugees are respected. Despite these allegations, the outcome of a risk assessment has yet to be released, nor is the scope of the announced oversight clear.
Another part of the agreement that raises doubts is the expected role of the Coast Guard, as no Egyptian who arrived on Italian soil this year has officially embarked in Egypt. According to the UNHCR spokesman, Libya was the departure country of nine out of ten Egyptians who arrived in Italy, followed by Turkey (9%) and Tunisia (1%). Maurice Stierl, a member of the Alarm Phone network, further explains that an unusually high number of large ships with between 300 and 600 people on board have been recorded leaving eastern Libya since the end of October. Many of them are Egyptians.
According to Julia Black, head of the Missing Migrants project, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that there were at least 144,500 Egyptian migrants in Libya during the summer. Black also points out that about 2,900 Egyptians had been intercepted at sea by Libyan authorities in November.
The Egyptian authorities, for their part, have repeatedly boasted that no migrant ships have departed since 2016, although UNHCR has documented that a small minority of Egyptians arriving in Italy have left the coast of that African country. The new EU program proposes to question the official version of Cairo, but when asked about it, the European Commission spokeswoman did not respond. Although he contacted the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Coordinator for Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration and Trafficking in Human Beings, he also received no response.
Concerns about the coastguard’s role have also increased because at the end of September a group of 23 migrants, mostly Egyptians, who had been roaming Malta’s search and rescue region were returned to Egypt after a rescue operation, according to four organizations active in the field of rescue at sea. 🇧🇷 “It was the first time we could document that Malta intervened in some way by ordering the merchant ships involved to land the survivors in Egypt, which was more than 500 nautical miles away, while Malta and Italy were only 150 nautical miles away. . This, of course, goes against international conventions,” said Juan Matías Gil, coordinator of rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean for Doctors Without Borders.
Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
