EUNAVFOR MED’s prognosis that the “decrease” observed over 2015 “should continue to be driven down through EUNAVFOR MED’s continued efforts” was deeply flawed. What it missed was the different dynamics affecting migrants of different countries of origin. This was perceived much more clearly by Frontex, which, in its Annual Risk Analysis report released in early 2016, noted that:

In retrospect, we can see how the drop in overall numbers registered by EUNAVFOR MED over 2015 was simply due to the fact that Syrians had all but stopped crossing the central Mediterranean after the April 2015 shipwrecks and the temporary opening of the so-called Balkan route in Autumn 2015, reaching Europe along the much shorter and safer Aegean route. While 2015 registered an overall decrease of 16,000 arrivals along the central Mediterranean route compared to the previous year, the decrease in the number of Syrians using this route was around 32,500. It is therefore easy to see that crossings by migrants of other nationalities were actually already increasing over 2015.

In this same report, Frontex further recognises that migrants from the Horn of Africa - Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan - are “driven by regional security issues, slow economic development, and lack of long-term livelihood options for refugees in the region”.   While Eritreans had been a prominent nationality amongst arrivals in Italy for several years and increased sharply as of summer 2013, in 2015 they became the top nationality arriving to Italy, with 39,162 arrivals. In 2015, arrivals of Sudanese migrants showed one of the sharpest increases (+194%), in the context of the deteriorating situation in Darfur at the time.

Concerning West African migrants, Frontex notes that “motivation for migration may vary among individuals, but most are believed to be pushed by economic motivations”.   Nevertheless, for the second strongest increase over 2015 - Nigerians (+166%), Frontex notes in its December 2015 Biweekly report that “the precarious situation in North-Eastern Nigeria, with continuous attacks perpetrated by insurgents and radical Islamist groups, mainly Boko Haram, have led to the internal displacement of over 2.1 million people in Northern Nigeria. Most of the displaced people are settled in host communities and camps, but in precarious conditions, with many of them deciding to try to reach a better place to live”.  

Frontex thus perceived clearly the increase in arrivals over 2015 from different African countries and that these were driven by contexts of economic and political crisis across the continent. To understand the increasing arrivals over 2015 by several different East, Central and West African nationalities, one would need to offer a more detailed analysis of political and economic trends in each country that contributed to outwards migration, an analysis which lies beyond the scope of this research. It would also be necessary to analyse the distinct smuggling networks they resort to – an issue which we will return to, which may have either eased or added friction to migrants’ movements. For the purpose of our present analysis however, what is crucial is that the increasing migratory trends from several parts of Africa that were underway over 2015, and noted by Frontex, largely continued over 2016. While there were exceptions, in particular with a decrease in the arrivals of Eritrean nationals by nearly half,   the sharp increases in arrivals from several African nationalities remained steady over 2016 especially for migrants from Nigeria, Gambia, and Ivory Coast. The number of Nigerians arriving on Italian shores increased from 22,237 in 2015 to 37,551 in 2016, making Nigerians the top nationality.

Summarizing the trends observed over 2016 in its 2017 Annual Risk Analysis report, Frontex noted that:

While we will argue in the next section that there were other factors influencing these shifts relating to developments on Libyan soil, in this section we focus on establishing the timing of the shifts in smuggling tactics and understanding the impact of the EUNAVFOR MED operation on them. We rely on the two EUNAVFOR MED reports that were made public by Wikileaks, the first covering the period from June to December 2015, the second from January to October 2016.   We further corroborated their findings through interviews with military personnel, reports from Frontex and the Italian Coast Guard, and the analysis of investigative journalists having interviewed smugglers in Libya.

EUNAVFOR MED’s mission was planned as a progression through four operational phases: first, surveillance activities; second, interception and destruction of vessels used for smuggling, initially on the high seas and eventually, if a UN resolution and Libyan consent was secured, into territorial waters; a third phase involving action on Libyan land following similar approval; and finally a fourth phase of handing over control of migration from Libya to Libyan authorities.  

As of the beginning of the operation on 22 June 2015 until the end of September 2015, the EUNAVFOR MED mission mainly focused on surveillance. The operation established “a patrol cycle predominantly located in the south west of the operating area in what was determined the area of highest migration concentration” – the so called ‘Lampedusa triangle’. […] Throughout the summer months,” the report continues, “the first priority of the force was to establish a presence and develop an understanding of the patterns of life within the area” - analysing the “flow of migration vessels” and determining patterns and modus operandi of smugglers.   During this phase, only 3,078 migrants were rescued,   and few boats appear to have been destroyed.  

It is only on the 7^th of October 2015 that EUNAVFOR MED moved into Phase 2A, which “saw a shift in the force’s focus from intelligence gathering to interdiction of Smugglers and Traffickers on the high seas, as the first active step in the disruption of [their] business model.”    In comparison to Phase 1, the force deployed for Phase 2A was substantially augmented by Member States. “At the height of the surge, nine surface units, a submarine, three fixed wing maritime patrol aircraft, five helicopters and one tactical UAV were deployed”, before being slightly reduced again as of the end of November in line with the seasonal decrease in crossings. During this phase, “airborne surveillance was stepped up to provide a near persistent presence across the southern boundary of the Lampedusa Triangle”, which in turn allowed naval assets to be “deployed tactically to effect interdiction, boarding and subsequent detention of escort, lookout or jackal Smuggler and Trafficker craft”.  

By the end of 2015, the report indicates that 8,336 migrants had been rescued, 67 migrant vessels (wooden and rubber) had been destroyed, and 46 individuals had been detained by Italian authorities and investigated for smuggling and trafficking crimes. The EUNAVFOR MED report notes that this surge in activities had important effects on smugglers’ mode of operation, which were described as “vigilant and highly adaptive, quickly implementing changes in the established Modus Operandi in accordance with perceived threats and opportunities.”  

EUNAVFOR MED first had an impact on the spatial logic of smugglers. Due to the deployment of the EUNAVFOR MED assets off the Libyan coast, the 2015 report notes that:

Second, the interdiction on the high seas and the destruction of migrants’ boats had an important impact on the shift from the use of wooden to rubber boats by smugglers.   The 2015 report notes that:

Third, also in their 2015 report, EUNAVFOR MED had already reported worsening conditions of crossings offered by smugglers coinciding with the beginning of the operation, without however noting any causal link. “Since the start of the operation, we have seen an evolution in smugglers Tactics, Techniques and Procedures, which has been corroborated by reporting from FRONTEX.”   Specifically, the report noted that:

It is probable that the effects of the EUNAVOR MED operation were incremental, and were heightened as the operation continued to implement Phase 2A over 2016, as described in its second six monthly report, covering the period from January to the end of October 2016. It is over this period that the destruction of vessels stepped up. While only 67 boats had been destroyed in the operation’s first 6 months in 2015, in the next 10 months in 2016, this figure was multiplied fourfold to reach 269 vessels (225 rubber boats, 40 wooden boats and 4 speed boats).   This figure does not include the vessels destroyed by the other actors – such as the Italian Navy within its operation Mare Sicuro and other Italian assets, which are also reported to have increasingly destroyed vessels since 2015.   Furthermore, while Médecins Sans Frontières for example usually does not destroy vessels following SAR events, some SAR NGOs such as Sea-Watch also puncture rubber boats so as not to confuse them on their radar   Military sources reported to us that between 75-80% of all intercepted vessels were destroyed over 2016.  

As EUNAVFOR MED had already indicated in its first report, the increasing destruction of vessels contributed to heighten the tactical shifts in smugglers’ practices towards the use of rubber boats. By the end of February 2016, Frontex also had reported internally this shift without attributing any cause to it, other than the shortage in wooden boats:

Over 2016, the share of vessels continued to shift towards small rubber boats, which came to be used in 70% of the SAR events, as shown by the data collected by Frontex and the Italian CG.

Because rubber boats carry less people at a time, and even more people than before sought to make the crossing in 2016, the reliance on rubber boats multiplied the number of SAR events – with 1,424 SAR events recorded by the Italian Coast Guard in 2016 against 906 in 2015.

Furthermore, by the end of March 2016, Frontex had already noted the tactic of smugglers to send off several rubber boats at once:

In addition to being corroborated by several sources, the effects of the operation are further consistent with the effects of past anti-smuggling operations, which systematically lead to an evolution of smuggling tactics, usually entailing more risk for migrants, while the demand for the service of smugglers remains unchanged.   While we have identified several instances in which Frontex noted smugglers’ tactical shifts that were consistent with those recorded by EUNAVFOR MED, it is surprising that Frontex and others did not ever note that these may be even partly related to the EUNAVFOR MED operation, which seems to remain entirely outside of their field of attention. Keeping EUNAVFOR MED’s effects on smugglers’ tactics outside of the frame of analysis has allowed Frontex and others in turn to blame these shifts on SAR NGOs, fuelling the toxic narrative against them.

While we have focused on the evolution and effects of the EUNAVFOR MED operation in the preceding section, it would be simplistic to attribute to it the sole responsibility for the evolution in the practices of smugglers. EUNAVFOR MED’s reports are mostly focused on documenting the effects of its own mission so as to justify its existence, and thus do not fully account for other actors and factors, in particular dynamics taking place on Libyan soil. While the political context in Libya makes detailed fieldwork difficult, our ongoing collaboration with investigative journalist Nancy Porsia and a recent report by Mark Micallef offer uniquely informed glimpses into smugglers’ practices and the evolving context in which they operate. When possible their findings have been corroborated with analysis from other sources such as Frontex. Through this prism, we can tell the same story of evolving smuggling tactics between 2015-2016 reconstructed above, but seen from the perspective of Libyan soil. What these insights demonstrate is that the growing Libyan turmoil and the smuggling practices that were allowed to proliferate within it had a far greater impact on the deteriorating conditions of crossing than the presence of SAR NGOs.

As we argued in Death by Rescue, the downward spiral in the conditions offered by Libyan smugglers has been documented since 2013.   The fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011 led to deep changes in what had previously been a relatively stable smuggling business.   The political fragmentation in Libya allowed new actors to enter the smuggling market, offering lower prices but not always possessing the willingness or know-how to organise safe crossings.   With increasing competition, smugglers resorted to subpar navigation equipment, or to loading more migrants on board unsafe boats so as to guarantee their profit margins. The increasing number of crossings as of summer 2013 and the October 2013 shipwrecks, which led Italy to launch its Mare Nostrum operation, were the expression of these worsening crossing conditions. However, after this phase of “liberalisation” of the smuggling market which saw the rise of the “low cost” model of smuggling, Mark Micallef has identified a new phase which began to take shape at the end of 2014 and consolidated towards the end of 2015, which he calls “resource predation”.   In this phase, militias have increasingly gained control over the migrant smuggling business, first taxing smuggling activities and then increasingly operating it themselves, considering migrants as “simply another commodity to be exploited in the broader resource predation carried out by armed groups that exercise effective control over the Libyan territory”.   Frontex also recognises the increasing involvement of militias in smuggling networks, noting that on the Libya coast “the militia’s ‘commanding officer’ in the region is the head of the network.”   Now, as Porsia notes, “migrants who voluntarily left their homes to seek a better future in Europe, are taken hostage by militias which sell them to smugglers from one leg to the other across the journey”.   In this configuration, in addition to the ebbing and flowing of state and non-state actors and their operations at sea which we have discussed above, Micallef argues that “routes, hubs, actors and modalities” of smuggling also evolve as a function of “the ebb and flow of tribal and militia relations”.   Several important evolutions took place over 2015-2016, which impacted the condition of crossing. We underline, in particular: the shift from Zuwara to Sabratha as main smuggling hub, which contributed to the fusion of the activities of smugglers and militias; secondly, the evolution of the main national groups of migrants crossing and the variegated smuggling networks they resort to; and finally, the increasing intervention of the Libyan Coast Guard.

First of all, the geography of smuggling along the coast evolved in conjunction with the transformations of smuggling networks noted above. While since 2013 the area of Zuwara had become the main point of departure for migrants, following a tragic shipwreck in August 2015 which resulted in bodies washing ashore, smugglers were pushed out of the city by the local population.   Several prominent smugglers long-established in Zuwara relocated their activities eastwards towards the area of Sabratha, which soon became the main departure hub. Sabratha however, is a highly militarised area fragmented along multiple fault-lines.   It is here that the new model of militia control over the smuggling business achieved its fullest realisation – with a symbiosis between the experience of Zuwaran smugglers and the territorial control of Sabratha militias. As both Porsia and Micallef note, despite the struggle for power in the area, syndicates of smuggling militias soon emerged, leading to a concentration of the market into a handful of key players who were able to operate with a free hand. As a Zuwaran smuggler told Micallef in August 2016:

Sabratha became a node of attraction within a web of increasingly strong transnational smuggling networks stretching to Sudan and Niger and enabling more and more intense movements of people to converge towards it.   Now instead of a few dozen people locked in connection houses waiting for the next leg in their journey, several hundred people could be “stocked” at any given time, according to a security source from Sabratha interviewed by Porsia.   This scale of human movement as a commodity illustrates the “industrial” dimension human smuggling has taken. The more the smuggling business came under the control of militias, the more migrants lost agency and control over their own fate. This evolution also contributed to worsening conditions, for in a market that increasingly depends on territorial and logistical control, as well as practices of extortion, rather then the choice and fidelity of customers, the level of service becomes less important in guaranteeing profitable transactions.   In addition to the impact of EUNAVFOR MED, these changing smuggling dynamics in response to endogenous factors in Libya certainly contributed to the decreasing quality of boats offered to migrants and their ever-higher degree of overloading. It is probable that these factors also contributed to the increasing tendency towards continuing departures during the dangerous winter months, a trend that was noted as “exceptional” by Frontex in early 2016 without attributing any cause to it.   While Sabratha is the paradigmatic example of the new fusion between smugglers and militias, it has emerged to different extents across the smuggling chain in other areas of the coast such as Garabulli, Zawiya, Surman and deeper inside Libya.  

Second, the changing composition of migrants discussed above has probably contributed to increasing the danger of crossing. We noted earlier the increasing prevalence of Central and Western African nationalities in 2016, while the number of Eritreans crossing the sea dropped by nearly half. However, migrants of different nationalities resort to using distinct smuggling networks, which have their respective operational modes, implying more or less danger for migrants.   As Porsia notes, Nigerian, Eritrean and Ethiopian brokers have set up their headquarters inside Libya and are able to control the entire passage from Sudan and Niger up to Europe, relying on Libyan smugglers for particular sections of the crossing through and from Libya. Migrants from the Horn of Africa – mainly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis – seal their deals with smugglers in Sudan with local brokers and their business partners from Eritrea and Ethiopia for the whole journey to Europe.   They also pay higher prices then their West African counterparts, and in certain cases the smugglers only receive actual payment once the passengers have arrived safely on European soil thanks to a payment system known as “hawala”.   This means that migrants from the Horn of Africa have more margin of manoeuvre in exercising their limited bargaining power. For examples, they usually refuse to leave outside of the Spring and Summer months when the risk of encountering bad meteorological conditions is higher.   Central and Western African migrants have instead usually been recruited by smugglers in Niger, in the city of Agadez, and pay their smugglers cash for each leg of their journey up to the embarkation point, often opting for lower budget crossings. As a result, they are offered less high security standards, which translates in boats of lesser quality, travelling in the hold of vessels and being regularly sent off during the winter. While Porsia notes that over 2015 “the low cost business model for migrants’ sea crossing spread over all the embarkation points, including those in which the major smuggling players operate,” a hierarchy has continued to exist between the networks smuggling migrants from the Horn of Africa versus those smuggling migrants from Central and West Africa.   The changing composition of nationalities marking the crossing over 2016 has meant that a greater proportion of migrants went through the more dangerous networks. This certainly affected the risk of crossing even though this is difficult to verify empirically.  

Third and finally, over 2016, under pressure from European authorities the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) increased their interception of migrants upon departure, thereby leading to a rise of the volatility and danger of the crossing. Ever since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, with whom Italy had collaborated to push-back migrants intercepted at sea, the EU and its member states have been pressuring whichever authority they could speak to in Libya to clamp down on migrants.   The EU’s mission EUBAM Libya has been conducting training with the LCG since 2014, and the LGC further cooperates with the EU Commission, Frontex and the EU’s Seahorse project.   The European Council decided on 20 June 2016 to launch a new training program for the LGC to be implemented by EUNAVFOR MED, which considers “a capable and well-resourced Libyan Coastguard who can […] prevent irregular migration taking place from their shores” critical to its exit strategy.   The training began on 26 October with 78 trainees on board EUNAVFOR MED assets and with teams from UNHCR as well as Frontex in charge of specific modules.   Finally, on 2 February 2017, the cooperation with Libya that Italy had sought to re-establish over the last years was formalised in a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) signed between Italy and the National Reconciliation Government of Libya.   While the MoU, which has at its core the fight against illegalised migration at sea and on Libya’s southern border, has been officially suspended following a decision of the Tripoli Appeals Court, its implementation remains underway and several patrol boats have been recently delivered by the Italian government to the LCG.  

As Nancy Porsia’s analysis however shows, the Libyan LCG is itself as fragmented and volatile as the Libyan political landscape.   While the Libyan Coast Guard is technically made up of six sectors which should be coordinated by the national command located in the capital of Tripoli, in practice the LCG command in Tripoli has no control over the units in the Eastern area, as they report to the Parliament based in Tobruq. Even in the Western area however the LCG command in Tripoli has little control overall and militias have come to operate Coast Guard-like functions, making it extremely difficult to differentiate actors on the ground. Despite this fragmentation of the LCG, as well as the limited vessels at its disposal, the increased pressure from the EU has resulted in a greater number of interceptions of migrants at sea in 2016. While over 2015 the LCG intervened infrequently in response to situations of distress, over 2016 the LCG units “rescued” 18,904 people off the Libyan coast according to IOM data, bringing them back to Libya where migrants are subsequently detained in extremely dire conditions.   The delivery by the Italian government on 15 May 2017 of the first four out of ten patrol vessels will further boost the LCG capacity to intervene at sea.  

The LCG’s intervention, however, simultaneously conflicts with, and is embedded within, the smuggling business. While the LGC has sought to demonstrate its effectiveness in intercepting migrants to tap into the opportunity for EU financial and political support, units also receive payment by smugglers and militias to let boats pass, and officials may receive payment for the release from detention centres of intercepted migrants.   The ambivalent role played by Libyan officials in relation to smuggling is no secret. While not referencing explicitly the LCG, Frontex has noted several times in its internal reports information it gathered of the participation of Libyan authorities in the smuggling business. For example, in its Biweekly report internally released on the 31^st of March 2016, it noted that:

In this sense, the LCG appear as one more actor intervening in migrant smuggling which has increased the volatility and danger of the smuggling business and SAR alike. Smugglers have adapted to the increasing activity of the LCG by carrying heavy weapons.   The risk of having vessels intercepted by the LCG may have also contributed to the shift from wooden to cheaper rubber boats as well as the tactic of towing one boat by another, which we have discussed above. The LCG itself has been involved in repeated acts of violence at sea. The LCG of Zawiya, which still has several functioning patrol vessels and rigid hulled inflatable boats, has been the most active West of Tripoli, patrolling the coastline stretching from Mutrud to Sabratha. It is reported to have removed the engine of boats seeking to pass without payment, leaving the boats adrift.   The Times further published a video (initially part of Ross Kemp’s documentary Libya’s Migrant Hell) showing the Zawiya CG beating migrants with a rope, while they were packed into a rubber boat during an interception.   Deplorable in it self, such a practice can also lead to the boat capsizing.

Several maritime units located near Zawiya – some belonging to the LCG, others not formally LCG but patrolling near an offshore oil refinery, were implicated in incidents with SAR NGOs.   On 17 August 2016, MSF’s vessel Bourbon Argos was attacked while it was located 24 nautical miles north of the Libyan coast. As MSF’s press release at the time described, “armed men on board the speedboat fired shots toward the Bourbon Argos from a distance of 400 to 500 metres and then boarded the vessel”.   The armed men then left without harming the crew. On 9 September 2016, the crew of a speedboat belonging to the NGO Sea-Eye was also arrested by the LCG after it entered territorial waters near Zawiya.   Finally, on 21 October 2016, the LCG of Zawiya violently interrupted a rescue operation Sea-Watch was conducting 14.5nm from the coast, boarding the overcrowded rubber boat and beating people, causing panic and a rupture in the boat. Over 150 people ended up in the water; of which Sea-Watch rescued 124 people and recovered four corpses.   This last incident exemplifies the additional risk the LCG’s increasing intervention has entailed for migrants.

As we finalise this report, a new incident between the LCG and Sea-Watch occurred, which has been well documented by Sea-Watch as well as a report by Amnesty International.   On 10 May 2017, the Italian coastguard Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome (MRCC Rome) received a distress call from migrants navigating within the Libyan territorial waters. MRCC Rome contacted the Libyan authorities who responded that they would take over the coordination of the rescue. MRCC Rome also contacted Sea-Watch, since its vessel was in the area, and requested it to direct itself towards the boat in distress. Sea-Watch’s vessel reached the passengers in distress first, with their boat now located outside Libyan territorial waters. As Sea-Watch deployed its RHIB to approach the migrants’ boat, the LCG’s vessel almost rammed into the Sea-Watch vessel to intimidate them. The Sea-Watch vessel retreated immediately, but could witness the LCG stopping the migrants’ boat under the threat of a gun and failing to act in accordance to established safety standards. While no casualties were reported, the migrants were pulled-back back to Libya, a country where their lives are at risk and where they were brought to detention centres. This incident indicates that the destabilising intervention of the LCG is bound to increase in 2017, as the pressure and resourcing from the EU continues.

From the above, we can see that the cumulative effects of the EUNAVFOR MED operation and of the dynamics within Libya, led to marked shifts in the strategies of smugglers towards worse conditions of crossing. More people crossed in 2016, and among them were more migrants of nationalities who resorted to the more dangerous “low cost” smuggling networks. More rubber boats were used, which are less resistant to adverse meteorological conditions, but also carry less people than wooden vessels, meaning that more vessels were sent out over the year – the number of SAR events leaped from 906 in 2015 to 1,424 in 2016.   Smugglers also increasingly sent out many boats at once. As the Italian Coast Guard data shows, instances of more than 20 simultaneous cases of SAR occurred regularly over the summer months of 2016, with a staggering peak of 53 SAR events in one day reached on 29 August.   Smugglers offered less provisions, launched migrants in worse weather conditions, and packed ever more migrants on boats of decreasing quality – with an average of 122 people aboard rubber boats recorded in 2016 compared with 103 in 2015.   Cases with as many as 200 people aboard rubber boats were recorded. Such extreme overloading increased the risk of capsizing, which was further heightened by the fact that “the wooden planks used to reinforce the floor of the rubber dinghies are so roughly cut that, on several overcrowded boats, they broke under the migrants’ weight”, as Frontex notes in its 2016 AFIC report.   While death by suffocation and asphyxia were reported in previous years in instances when migrants were trapped in the hold of wooden vessels, over 2016 they were reported by NGOs even on rubber boats, with migrants being crushed by fellow passengers. While smugglers continued to seek to recover vessels and their engines for re-use   – a task made increasingly difficult by the interdiction operated by EUNAVFOR MED – they also developed a new tactic noted in EUNAVFOR MED’s 2016 report: “the new modus operandi entails a skiff towing a rubber boat without an engine, which is then left adrift”.   This tactic proved lethal in several instances, such as the 26 May 2016 case involving the Watch The Med Alarm Phone.   These worsening conditions of crossing find their expression in the increasing mortality rates recorded in April and May 2016, almost reaching the height of the mortality spike registered in April 2015.

As a result, situations of acute distress – imminent death – occurred closer and closer to the Libyan shores. In its 2015 report, EUNAVFOR MED had already recognized that “with the limited supply and the degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [to be considered in distress according to international conventions] from the moment they launch.”   In its 2016 report, it noted that “the majority of migrants still die inside or very close to Libyan territorial waters”.   Similarly, in January 2016, Frontex noted an increase in incidents reported outside of the Triton operational zone, that is close to the Libyan coast.  

These shifts naturally had a dramatic impact on SAR activities. It should be noted that the peaks in mortality recorded in April and May 2016 occurred while SAR NGO vessels were still being redeployed after their winter break.   There was still only one SAR NGO vessel present for most of April, that of SOS Méditerranée, and only five were deployed in May. SAR NGOs accounted for a small fraction of SAR activities over these months – 4% in April and 12% in May. According to interviews conducted for this research, the assets of MSF and of Sea-Watch continued to be positioned beyond the 24nm limit when they were deployed at the end of April. MRCC Rome however increasingly directed them to intervene within the 24nm limit, where situations of imminent distress were being signalled. Over the summer, MSF’s vessels maintained their default operational zone beyond the 24nm, while Sea-Watch and other SAR NGOs increasingly intervened proactively beyond that limit in order to best respond to cases of distress closer, and at times within, Libyan territorial waters. While inter-NGO competition characteristic of humanitarian contexts may have also played a part in this trend, moving closer to the Libyan coast corresponded to a humanitarian need.

Importantly, we can note that the mortality rate was brought down over the summer months, just as the NGO flotilla reached its peak deployment – with eleven SAR vessels – and the share of rescues operated by NGOs increased – with a peak of 35% in June. The mortality rate peaked once again in November and December when NGO SAR vessels progressively stopped their operations for the winter. Plotting the evolution of the mortality rate and that of the number of SAR NGO assets deployed at sea, we can observe a striking inverse correlation.   The importance of an increasing number of SAR assets proactively deployed to make the crossing safer is logical: only a high number of assets close to the Libyan coast could respond to the multiplication of SAR cases that was being observed in this area. In November, SAR NGO presence remained important, but encountered several adverse conditions that mitigated the capacity to avert deaths at sea. First, record crossings in October and November were observed, while these months normally see decreasing crossings as meteorological conditions worsen – a phenomenon which Frontex attributes once again to the presence of “maritime assets are patrolling close to the Libyan shore” without providing any evidence of this causal connection.   High winds were repeatedly recorder in November and several lethal incidents occurred in bad weather over the month.   In addition, while the number of SAR NGO assets decreased to seven in November, this month saw the highest share of rescue performed by SAR NGOs – 47%. This indicates that other actors must have disengaged at the time as NGOs absorbed a greater share of rescues with fewer assets; we note in particular the decreasing share of rescues operated by EUNAVFOR MED and Frontex in November. With a greater burden to carry in more adverse conditions, the activities of SAR NGOs were not able to mitigate the increasing danger of crossing in November.

We can understand why smugglers would be seeking to rely on NGOs. As the EUNAVFOR MED’s 2016 report mentions: “It could be argued that by operating so close to the Libyan territorial waters the NGO presence has allowed the smugglers to recover boats to the shore more easily for re-use and shorten the average rescues from 75nm to 35 and now 20nm from the Libyan shore.”   In addition, echoing Frontex’s analysis, the report notes the decrease in the provision of satellite phones by smugglers to migrants and attributes it to the identifiable presence of the NGO SAR vessels, noting that “this is believed to be because smugglers seem to be aware where they can reliably find rescuing assets particularly from the NGO’s who broadcast their position via the Automatic Identification System (AIS).” The use of online vessel tracking platforms to identify the location of NGO SAR assets was confirmed to Nancy Porsia by smugglers in Libya.   While it is thus probable that the presence of SAR NGOs contributed to the decreasing provision of satellite phones, this occurred in the context of the deeper trend of the worsening conditions of crossing provided within the militia-led smuggling model. The decreasing use of satellite phones, which normally allow migrants to alert the Italian Coast Guard, in turn made the deployment of SAR assets close to the Libyan coast an absolute humanitarian necessity since this became the condition to detect vessels that might otherwise have drifted or sunk unnoticed.

While the practices of SAR NGOs may thus have inadvertently contributed to consolidating the shifts in smugglers’ practices, there has so far been no evidence of the criminal collaboration with smugglers alluded to by several actors, and as such, we cannot engage with these claims in details. As we mentioned in the “toxic narrative” section, Carmelo Zuccaro, public prosecutor in Catania, has claimed that “telephone calls from Libya to certain NGOs, floodlights lighting up the way to the boats of these organisations, ships that suddenly cut their transponder (allowing for their localization) are proven facts”.   Zuccaro’s claims appear to simply seek to turn standard practices which SAR actors, state and civilian alike, have been undertaking openly for years, into a suspicious practice. While NGOs such as the WatchTheMed - Alarmphone and state agencies in charge of rescue alike routinely receive distress calls via satellite phone from migrants at sea following which SAR operation are triggered, direct contact between the smugglers and SAR NGOs at sea has been firmly denied by all SAR NGOs. For what concerns the (mis-)use of floodlights, SAR vessels ordinarily turn on their lights to be able to be seen by vessels in distress in the night. Finally, it is not uncommon that the poor quality of AIS vessel tracking coverage off the coast of Libya leads to interruptions in the transmission of positions. If these are the practices Zuccaro has “proof” of, they do not involve criminal activity. In fact the claims of criminal activity have been increasingly retracted by several prosecutors as they failed to find conclusive evidence.  

Even Frontex’ interpretation of the already mentioned incident of November 2016, which the Agency claimed to be “the first reported case where the criminal networks directly approached an EU vessel and smuggled the migrants directly into Europe using the NGO vessel”, has subsequently been revealed to be spurious.   In this incident, Frontex reports that according to the Italian authorities, “a small fibreglass boat in the area displaying a Libyan flag with persons pretending to be fishermen (…) approached one of the NGO vessels Minden and transferred two Libyan citizens from the small boat to the EU vessel claiming that they were migrants. The NGO vessel took them aboard and let the Libyan boat leave the area. After the debriefing activities, the migrants stated that the crew aboard the small Libyan boat were the people smugglers”.   However, as investigative journalist Zack Campbell has demonstrated in his detailed reconstruction of the reported case, in all probability the reported incident involved “engine fishers” – often fishermen who as an additional lucrative activity recuperate engines from the boats from which migrants have been rescued. Regardless of their identity, what is most important is that they did not “smuggle migrants directly into Europe using the NGO vessel” but simply supported the SAR operation by pulling out of the water two people after their boat had capsized.   From the scarce elements that were put forth and our analysis of them, as has been the case for the Italian Senate’s Defence Commission, no evidence of collusion with smugglers emerges.