Migrants who set out from Libya in small boats across the Mediterranean face multiple potential dangers. The bodies that regularly wash up on the country's shores are a testament to the major risk that the boat will get into trouble on the high sea and its occupants will drown or die from dehydration.

But there is also a possibility, even if they travel by night to avoid detection, that the migrants will be stopped and "pulled back" by the Libyan coast guard. Upon their return to Libya, these migrants can expect to be detained under terrible conditions, exposed to abuse and extortion, and possibly channeled into trafficking networks.

The UN migration agency IOM says that in the past year, the number of interceptions and forcible returns to Libya has increased to 20,839 from 17,000 in 2023. According to the agency's most recent data, 255 people were returned to the coastal cities of Azzawya and Sirt in the last week of November. Twenty-four of them were children.

Calls to end EU-Libya agreements

The practice of intercepting migrants in Libya’s coastal waters and pulling them back is now in its eighth year. It dates from a series of cooperation agreements signed by Italy, the EU and Libya in early 2017 to help fund and train the Libyan coast guard and other authorities to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.

Five years into the deal, which was renewed in 2020, and again in 2022, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) wrote "this help comes at the expense of migrants and refugees’ human rights, as virtually everyone intercepted at sea by the Libyan coast guard ends up in a Libyan detention center. The agreement … supports the system of exploitation, extortion and abuse in which so many migrants feel themselves trapped."

Civil society, non-government organizations and rights groups have long objected to cooperation with Libya, urging the EU to withdraw funding. They have filed a complaint in the International Criminal Court, alleging that officials in the EU and its member states, as well as members of the Libyan coast guard and others were responsible for crimes against humanity against migrants and refugees.

In July this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for a review of the EU deal with Libya.

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Abuses documented

The Libyan authorities’ behavior, including firing at or near migrant boats, ramming them to make them capsize, and returning survivors to Libya, has been repeatedly documented, with many incidences of abuse, threats and intimidation at sea occurring in 2024.

Late last month, footage filmed by the crew of the Geo Barents civil sea rescue organization showed Libyan guards taking women and children off a deflating migrant boat and onto a speedboat at gunpoint, leaving dozens of other men and boys in the water.

In June, the German organization Sea-Watch broadcast a video showing Libyan coast guards using sticks to beat migrants who had just been rescued by a merchant ship. The migrants had been forced to get off the tanker and return to Libya.

Two months earlier, during a rescue by the crew of the Mare Jonio in April, Libyan coast guards opened fire on one of the NGO’s lifeboats, causing panic.

And in March 2024, the crew on the German rescue ship Humanity 1 said they were threatened by a Libyan coast guard vessel as they tried to rescue 77 migrants from three small boats. At least one person drowned and more than 20 were forced back to Libya, Humanity 1 said.

It has been nearly three years since the IOM strongly condemned Libya’s "excessive use of force" after the coast guard fired on a migrant boat, resulting in the death of one migrant in 2022.

The same year, the EU acknowledged in a confidential report that the Libyan authorities had used excessive force against migrants and violated international law, but it decided not to end the collaboration.

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