Report on Exiles from Libya Fleeing to Egypt

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Jul 30, 2011 Egypt
[Image from iom.int] [Image from iom.int]

Report on Exiles from Libya Fleeing to Egypt

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following is the latest from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) on the situation facing migrant workers and Libyan nationals fleeing Libya as refugees.]

Exiles from Libya Flee to Egypt: Double Tragedy for Sub-Saharan Africans

INTRODUCTION

1. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and refugees flee Libya

The conflict that began in Libya on 17 February 2011 with a popular revolt against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, following the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions in January, triggered a mass exodus of the civilian population into neighboring countries. The violence perpetrated by Gaddafi’s security forces against civilians, the conflict led by rebel groups controlling eastern Libya to overthrow the regime and NATO bombings have caused thousands of deaths and injuries and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country. In addition, as detailed in this report, violence specifically targeting immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa has forced thousands of migrant workers and refugees to flee Libya.

According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) dated 20 June 2011, more than 1.1 million people have fled Libya since late February, mostly over land borders with Tunisia and Egypt. Of those only about 19,000 exiles have tried to escape by sea, arriving in Lampedusa and Malta between 26 March and 14 June 2011, representing 1.7% of the exodus from Libya. Fantasies of “invasion” voiced in Europe have therefore no basis in reality, but have nonetheless been used to justify extraordinary surveillance measures at sea aiming to prevent the arrival of migrants and refugees into European territory. The multiplication of these barriers has had dramatic consequences – as of 14 June the UNHCR estimates that over 2,000 people have drowned while fleeing Libya right to seek refuge abroad.

The vast majority of those fleeing Libya between February and June were immigrants working in Libya: over 500,000 persons originating from Egypt, Tunisia, Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan and China) and numerous Sub-Saharan African countries.

Libya, with its vast oil reserves and small population (approximately 6.4 million), resorted massively to foreign labor to run its economy: a figure of 1.5 million migrant workers before the start of the conflict is most commonly cited, but other estimates are around 2.5 million (including about 1 million Egyptians).

2. Severe violations of the rights of migrants and refugees in Libya before the conflict

Prior to the recent rebellion, migrants arriving in or transiting through Libya were regularly victims of serious human rights violations, including physical violence, arbitrary arrests and detention and forced returns. Migrants in an irregular situation were often arrested and detained in camps, in terrible conditions, sometimes for many years. others were expelled from Libya, in violation of international law and the principle of non-refoulement.

Libya has never ratified the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees of 1951 and does not have a system guaranteeing the right to asylum. Registration of asylum seekers, documentation activities and refugee status determination procedures were carried out by the UNHCR until June 2010, when the body was expelled by the Libyan government without explanation.

This coincided with the beginning of negotiations between Libya and the European Union on the conditions and amount of an assistance fund to be granted to Libya for the purpose of fighting irregular migration.[1] This policy, under which the EU made Gaddafi a partner in fighting irregular migration into Europe and ignored the grave human rights violations committed against migrants in Libya, formed part of the EU’s general policy of externalising border controls.[2] 

3. Allowed across the Libyan border only to remain in transit

The geography of Libya, vast expanses of desert with populated areas located mainly along the Mediterranean, explains the fact that the exodus has been concentrated at the Tunisian and Egyptian borders (about 582,812 and 358,088 entries in Tunisia and in Egypt respectively since the conflict began as of 20 June 2011), while smaller numbers have fled across the southern borders with Chad and Niger.[3]
 
The Egyptian and Tunisian governments have maintained their borders open to those fleeing Libya. But for most migrants admission into the country does not mean the right to stay. with the exception of those with Libyan nationality, who until now have been allowed to settle temporarily in Tunisia and Egypt, nationals of other countries are kept in border areas pending evacuation to their countries of origin or - for refugees who cannot return home - resettlement in host countries. the IOM and the UNHCR are responsible for coordinating humanitarian assistance in border areas and organizing departures.

4. FIDH’s fact-finding mission at the Egyptian-Libyan border
 
Alerted by information on the precarious situation of refugees and migrants stranded at the Egyptian/ Libyan border at Salloum and by reports of acts of violence specifically targeting immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa in Libya, FIDH sent a fact-finding mission to the border with two main objectives

  • to document the situation of the exiles at the border;
  • to collect direct testimony from exiles on their experiences in Libya since the outset of the conflict.

Following a mission organized by CIMADE at the Tunisian-Libyan border in early April,[4] the FIDH mission took place from 8-14 May 2011, including three days at the Salloum border. The mission delegation was composed of Geneviève Jacques, member of FIDH’s International Board and former Secretary General of CIMADE, who also participated in the mission to Tunisia, Mohamed Badawi, a Sudanese lawyer from Darfur and deputy director of the Sudanese organization, African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, and Christine Tadros, Refugee Status Determination Team Leader at the refugee aid organization, Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA), based in Cairo. The team was accompanied by a freelance journalist, Gael Grilhot.

In Cairo, the mission delegation met with officials from the IOM (Enrico Ponziani and Reham Hussein) and UNHCR (Mohamed Al Dayri and Mark Fawe) who provided information on the work done by the organizations since the outbreak of the Libyan crisis. The mission also met with Jason Bellanger, representative in Egypt of the Catholic Relief Service, one of the NGOs providing humanitarian aid at the border until the end of April and with Nancy Baron, Director of the Psycho-Social Training Institute in Cairo and professor at the American University Center for Migration and Refugees Studies in Cairo, who had worked for several weeks to provide social support to exiles at the Salloum border. A meeting with the director of a human rights organization in Egypt, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hossam Bahgat, addressed the wider challenges facing Egypt during this period of political transition.

At the Salloum border post, the mission met with UNHCR representative, Jean Paul Cavalieri and the Team Leader for Refugee Status Determination procedures, Nazneen Farooqi. The mission also met with several IOM representatives.
 
The delegation encountered no difficulties exchanging with male migrants at the Salloum Land Port, addressed spontaneously and randomly on the site. It was more difficult to exchange with the few women migrants present in Salloum. they were gathered separately in a customs hangar and on two occasions male migrants prevented the delegation from talking to the women, claiming that they “would speak only to United Nations personnel.” In total, the delegation conducted more than 50 individual interviews and 4 group interviews at the Salloum Land Port, with migrants originating from 12 different countries. The delegation also met with several migrants of Palestinian origin in a no man’s land between the Egyptian and Libyan border controls.

On 8 May, the total population on the site was 1,401 individuals, of which 609 had been registered by the UNHCR as asylum seekers and refugees.

[Click here to read the full International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) report.]

[1] The National Indicative Programme for Libya 2011-2013 negotiated between the EU and Libya, includes the fight against illegal migration as one of its three priorities. The budget proposed by the EU for the programme was 60 million euros.

[2] See further FIDH and UFTDU press statement (in French), Libye/UE : La FIDH et l’UFTDU condamnent les propos racistes du Colonel Khadafi, 30 septembre 2010, http://www.fidh.org/Libye-UE-La-FIDH-et-l-UFTDU-condamnent-les-propos

[3] See IOM situation reports http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/lang/fr/pid/1. 

[4] See press release and CIMADE report at www.lacimade.org.

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412